Filed under: How-tos, Tips and tricks, Odds and ends, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Change your default browser or default mail client without launching Safari or Mail
Scott may have ranted about this subject before and it's very possible that I have responded with these suggestions before, but since he gets a do-over, I get one too!I agree with Scott that Apple is just plain wrong in making its users launch Safari and Mail in order to change their default to something else. I understand why they do it - I just don't agree with their tactics. That being said, there are ways to avoid doing it Apple's OS X way and instead do it the old Classic Internet Config way. Launching Safari is no big deal, obviously, but you shouldn't have to if you're not interested in using it. Having to launch Mail in order to tell it that you want to use something else is a bit more of a pain since you can't launch Mail and access the preferences without setting up an account! Why must I set up an account (even a bogus one) in a mail client that I don't plan to use? Fortunately most mail clients ask you when you launch them if you want them to become your default. That's a good thing. But some of those apps (Entourage comes to mind) only ask you once and if you decline at that time you're back to square one.
MisFox, More Internet and RCDefaultApp are the three apps that come to mind for Scott (and anyone else who cares) to check out.
- MisFox stands for Missing Internet Settings for X and it's a GUI app for changing a variety of internet protocol settings. MIME type settings and helper apps.
- More Internet is a system preference pane which does pretty much the same thing, and it's Universal Binary.
- RCDefaultApp is also a preference pane and does all of the above and then some. It, too, is Universal Binary.
All three will handle mail client and browser default settings without having to ever launch Safari or Mail if you don't want to. All three are free. A colleague just pointed me to IC-Switch, which I wasn't aware of previously and it does all those same things in regard to Internet Config settings - but it installs as a menubar item so that you can change defaults on the fly.
If you're aware of other apps that do the same thing, let us know in the comments!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Samual Icky said 8:53PM on 11-07-2006
While I don't use Safari I can kinda understand placing that pref inside of safari... but mail... well you have to set up a mail account to change this setting! That is so wrong.
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marc cardwell said 9:38PM on 11-07-2006
thank you, thank you! for posting this. i have to use entourage at work, and have avoided mailto links for a long time (when it launches mail, i go back to safari and manually write down the address or look it up in the web source code).
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Mike said 6:17PM on 11-07-2006
I don't use Entourage anymore, but I remember it asking every time I launched it if I wanted it to be my default email client, which was pretty annoying since I couldn't turn that off.
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Sam said 5:57PM on 11-07-2006
Not one, but two different articles about this...along with no less than four standalone solutions all to do something that takes but the shortest of moments. *sigh*
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doc said 6:09PM on 11-07-2006
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you - i thought id never sort that freakin adobe pdf default app preference out! mind you i hadnt googled it, but now i dont have to - thank you
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Scott said 9:29PM on 11-07-2006
I needed this a few months ago. Mail crashed or something and i couldn't switch my mail client to gmail notifier. In the new version you can control that feature the same as mail though.
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Otterman said 7:26AM on 11-08-2006
The default browser can be set in its preferences window. I just started taking OmniWeb for a spin and set it to default browser from within its preference window. For Entourage, maybe they'll fix this in the Sept 2007 version!
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Niklas said 2:19PM on 11-08-2006
Other Applications besides Safari you can use to set your default browser:
• FireFox (only to FireFox)
• OmniWeb
• Opera
• Camino
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Phil Barton said 9:44AM on 11-20-2006
This is a lot of help! But it still annoys me to think that we have to do all this just to set things straight. It takes a little time I know but so unnecessary. It's a good thing there are people like you who know things that help people like me who don't know what to do :) Of course Apple's reasons for doing what they do are understandable. But please... customer satisfaction first!
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