Changing default mail client on macOS without signing in to the Mail app
April 13, 2023
The things we have to do sometimesā¦ š
Maybe you use another mail client than the Mail app on macOS, and you
want to make it the default, so that when you click mailto: links, it
actually opens the app you want.
Apple documents how to do that in change the default email app:
- Open the Mail app.
- From the menu bar, choose Mail > Settings.
- Click General.
- Choose an email app from the Default email reader menu.
Thatās great, except it doesnāt work. If you never used the Mail app, which you probably didnāt if you use another mail client, you canāt access the settings! Youāre greeted with this screen:
And the settings are greyed out!
What to do then? Thereās a number of solutions:
- Connect your mail account to the Mail app to go through this dialog and finally access the settings.
- Use a number of different third-party apps that can change default associations.
- Write a script to mess with the
LaunchServicesAPI.
But my favorite, that doesnāt require any third-party app, consists in selecting Other Mail Account, putting garbage in the fields, and let it fail a few times until it works!
This will obviously fail, and prompt you for more information:
Just keep hitting the Sign In button until it gives up and lets you through! You now have access to the settings menu.
From there, you can set your Default email reader to your favorite app.
Using Gmail inside Firefox as default email reader on macOS
In my case, I selected the Firefox app in the previous step, because I want to use Gmail inside Firefox as my default email reader.
With that, the next time you open a mailto: link from anywhere on your
system, itās going to open Firefox, and Firefox will then need to know
you want to use Gmail for this. Normally itāll prompt you the first
time, but you can also configure it in the Applications settings:
I hope this helps!