Best Mac email clients of 2018 While Mail for Mac is a great email client for most users, some of us require something a little more feature-rich for our day-to-day life.
Mail is set as the default email program on our Mac, so when we happen to click on an email link in anything (say, our browser), the Mail app automatically opens up and creates an email message. We don’t want that, we’d like to be able to designate our chosen email apps (I use Thunderbird, she uses Entourage). How do you change this? While there’s a lot about Mac OS X that I think is wonderfully crafted, changing the default email program (or Web browser, for that matter) is pretty baffling. In the old days, there was a separate Control Panel for changing all these settings, but now you need to know the trick… The topmost element is what you want to change: pick the mailer you’d prefer as your default email handler (You can see that I use Microsoft Entourage, not Apple Mail). Click the little red button on the top left to close the window and quit Mail without finishing up the configuration steps. That’s all there is to it. If you wanted to change your default Web browser, by the way, Apple Safari has a similar option on its Preferences pane, in the “General” area. Why it’s not a part of the “Network” Control Panel, or even its own Control Panel, escapes me completely. Wouldn’t that be easier? Let’s Stay In Touch!
I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
If you’ve ever been browsing on a Mac and clicked a mailto: link, you may have discovered that it often tends to default to the Mail app. If you want to use Gmail (or another email service) you need to make a few changes.
To be clear, the problem isn’t with opening links in another email client like Outlook or Thunderbird. Many solutions we found explain that all you have to do is open Mail’s preferences and select the default email reader.
This only means email will open by default in another email client. If you want mailto: links to open in Gmail on Safari or Chrome or any other browser, however, then doing this won’t work. You actually have to cut out Mail altogether and make the changes to the browser itself.
On Chrome, it’s incredibly easy to default open mailto: links in Gmail. You can simply open a Gmail window and click on the gray double diamonds next to the bookmark star. Out pops a dialog asking if you want to allow, deny, or ignore. If you choose “allow” or “deny” then either way, you’re set.
If you later change your mind, such as if you realize you do want to open mailto: links in Gmail, then you can change it. Type “chrome://settings/handlers” in the location bar and choose (or remove) gmail as your mail handler.
Default Mail Program For Windows 10
If you use Firefox, it’s also easy. Open the preferences (“Command + ,”) and click the “Applications” tab. Scroll through the “Content Type” until you find “mailto” and then choose your default “Action” from the right column.
![]()
Okay, so those are third-party browsers, but what about Apple’s own Safari browser, which a great number of Mac users use by default?
![]()
Unfortunately, Safari doesn’t have a simple way to set applications handlers. We searched for an easy method (keyword: easy) such as a setting or configuration file, but the only way to reliably do this in Safari is using the mailto extension (it’s also available for Opera and Chrome).
The mailto extension works for more than simply Gmail. Once you download the extension and install it, a configuration screen will open. Choose your mail service and then restart Safari.
Now, when you click upon mailto: links, your email service should open in a compose tab. Note, if your email isn’t represented in this list. You can click “Custom URL” at the bottom and add it. You should perform a web search or consult your email’s knowledge base for what that URL would be.
If you change your mind or email service, you want to open Safari’s preferences and click the “Extensions” tab then “Uninstall” to remove the extension, or “Options” to reopen the configuration page.
That’s all there is to setting Gmail as your default email on OS X, and hopefully you can use these methods to change your mail handler regardless of the service. If you have a question or comment to add, we encourage you to add your thoughts to our discussion forum.
READ NEXT
Default Mail Program For Mac
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2020
Categories |