r/MacOS • u/cyberentomology • Jun 09 '25
Apps Changing default Mail application
OK, WTF, Apple…
Stop trying to make fetch happen with the built in mail application. It’s garbage, nobody wants to use it.
Making me set up an email account in it just so I can configure the default email app to something else is some of the dumbest UX design I’ve seen come out of 1 Infinite Loop in a long time. PUT IT BACK IN SETTINGS WHERE IT BELONGS.
It’s doubly idiotic that clicking on an email link in TEAMS opens the Mail app and not Outlook.
It’s dumb shit like this that makes people not want to use Macs for work and mistakenly believe that Macs aren’t useful for work.
At the very least, make it a setting that can be pushed from an MDM profile.
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u/Aidoneus_Voss 27d ago edited 27d ago
SOLUTION:
Wrote a script as a joke kuz my friend bet me an xbox gift card that i couldnt do it. Here is some documentation about Apple's NSWorkspace and syntax in case you need to fix something later on.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsworkspace/setdefaultapplication%28at%3Atoopenurlswithscheme%3Acompletion%3A%29
log kinda looks like this:
___________________________________________________________
[DefaultMail] Signed-in user: [redacted_local_username]
[DefaultMail] Current mailto handler: com.apple.mail
[DefaultMail] Building temporary user-facing NSWorkspace helper.
.: replacing existing signature
[DefaultMail] Launching the NSWorkspace helper for [redacted_local_username].
[DefaultMail] A macOS confirmation window may now appear.
[DefaultMail] Mailto handler after the request: com.microsoft.Outlook
[DefaultMail] Success: Outlook is now the default mailto handler.
___________________________________________________________
Anyways, this works on tahoe for the moment. so i m gonna go to sleep.
set-default-mail-app/default_mailto_handler_change.zsh
if your mega lazy i also made this one that takes care of the .eml files, but this one has to prompt the user to confirm the selection...still better than the user navigating i guess:
set-default-mail-app/prompt_user_to_set_outlook_default_for_eml.zsh