An Instructive Guide to Change the Default Email Program for Different Browsers

This guide is dedicated to all of my fellow Gmail users who have ever clicked a “mailto” link to share web content via email, only to realize that the wrong email client opened their browser.

What annoys me the most is that my computer keeps opening Outlook, even though I am a Gmail devotee.

Not just Gmail users, I know there will be many other email users like Yahoo or Outlook who will have to face the same situation.

My reason for writing this guide is to educate all email users on how to make their favorite email clients open an email link for them, be it Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or others.

“Mailto” links are hyperlinks that use mailto instead of http://, so clicking them will bring up a new email compose window instead of a web page.

For Internet Explorer

Set ‘Mail’ or ‘Outlook’ as your default email client

To set the email program of your choice as the default for Internet Explorer, you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to your Windows Control Panel
2. Click on “Internet Options”

3. Then click on the “Programs” tab.

4. Click “Set Programs”

5. Then click “Set Default Programs”

6. In the section with default applications, click on “Mail”

7. A new menu will appear where you will see various programs out of which 2 options are given for the email application, namely ‘Mail’ and ‘Outlook’. You can choose any of them to set as the default email program for your browser.

Note- If you want to set Gmail or Yahoo as your default email program, you need to follow the steps below..

Set ‘Gmail’ as your default email client

1. Start Internet Explorer on your computer.
2. You must install the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer; for that click on this link – Google Toolbar
3. After installation, click on the ‘Toolbar Options’ icon located in the upper right corner of the window.
4. Under ‘Web Browsing Tools’, select the ‘Use Gmail for “MailTo” links” checkbox.
5. Finally, click ‘Save’.

Set ‘Yahoo’ as your default email client

1. Start Internet Explorer on your computer.
2. You must install the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer; for that click on this link – Yahoo Toolbar
3. Then restart Internet Explorer
4. Go to ‘Control Panel’
5. Click on “Internet Options”
6. Click on the ‘Programs’ tab
7. Then select ‘Yahoo! Mail’ from the dropdown menu, then click ‘OK’.

For Google Chrome

To change the default email client for Google Chrome, follow the steps below:

1. Launch the Google Chrome browser
2. Click the ‘menu’ icon in the top right corner, then click ‘Settings’

3. On the left, click ‘Privacy and security’

4. Then click ‘Site Settings’ to expand the menu

5. Scroll down and click on “Additional permissions”

6. Then click on “Handlers”

7. Make sure the “Sites can request protocol handling” option is enabled.

for firefox

To change the default email client for Mozilla Firefox, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the browser menu button located in the upper right corner, then click on ‘Options’

2. In the “General” section, scroll down to “Applications.”

3. Type ‘mailto’ in the search box and select it in the ‘Content Type’ tab.

4. Click on the ‘Action’ column to change the action and a dropdown menu will appear with many options:

• If you select ‘Always ask’, every time you use the mail function, you will be asked which program you want to use.
• If you select Use (default), this will automatically launch your operating system’s email program in the compose window.
• If you select ‘Use Gmail’ or ‘Use Yahoo! Mail’, this will open the compose page for the webmail service you selected.
• After selecting ‘Use another’, you will be able to choose an external program to run Firefox.
• By clicking on ‘Application Details’ you will be able to see information about all the email programs that Firefox can use.

5. Once selected, simply close the settings page and all changes will be saved automatically.

for Safari

To change the default email app for the Safari browser, follow the instructions provided:

1. Launch the Safari web browser
2. Then you need to install ‘Google Mailto Extension’ for Safari using this link: Google Mailto Extension
3. Click on the ‘Downloads’ icon located on the right side of the screen.
4. Then double click on the extension you downloaded.
5. Click “Install”
6. Now, in the ‘Options’ section, you need to select the email client of your choice by clicking on it.
7. After that, reload your browser and you’re done.

For Windows 10

Changing the default email client in Windows 10 is almost the same as changing other default Windows 10 apps. So if you want to set your preferred email client as default, here are some instructions for you:

1. Click on the Windows icon, then click on the ‘Settings’ icon.

2. Then click on “Applications”

3. In the left column, click on “Default Applications”

4. In the default applications section, click ‘Mail’ to change the default application or mail program.

5. In the list that appears, click the email application you want to set as the default.

6. You can also set your default email application to a specific protocol, i.e. Mailto, if you want those connections to open with a non-system-wide email client. For this, you need to go back to the ‘Default Applications’ section and scroll down, click on ‘Choose default applications by protocol’

7. Then scroll down to the left and find ‘MAILTO’; click ‘Mail’ and select the desired email application to set as the default by protocol.

Also Read: Set Google as Home Page

Categories: How to
Source: HIS Education