Don’t Like Your iPhone’s Default Apps? Here’s How to Change Them

Apple releases iOS 18.2 In December, just over a month after the tech giant published iOS 18.1. The latest iPhone update brings more Apple Intelligence features to some iPhones and also makes it easier to change your iPhone’s default apps.

Read more: Everything you need to know about iOS 18

Your default apps are the ones your iPhone automatically uses in certain situations. For example, if you click on a phone number on a website, your iPhone will open the Phone app and dial the number. But if you prefer to use another app, such as WhatsApp, for calling, you can now set that app as the default calling app on your iPhone.

Here’s how to change the default apps on your iPhone.

How to change your iPhone’s default apps

1. Open settings.
2. tap app.
3. tap Default application.

From this menu, you can choose to change the default apps for different categories on your iPhone. Here are the categories you can change description of apple Every one.

• Application installation*: Select an alternative app market instead of the App Store as the default app market.
• Browser application: Select another app instead of the Safari app when opening a web link.
• call: Choose another app instead of the Phone app or FaceTime app to make the call.
• call filtering: Choose an app to display caller ID and block unwanted callers.
• Contactless App*: Select another app to conduct contactless transactions using your device’s built-in technology.
• e-mail: Select a different app instead of the Mail app when opening a link to send an email.
• keyboard: Select an application for system-wide text input functionality.
• messaging: Select another app instead of the Messages app when opening a link to send an instant message.
• Passwords and codes: Choose another app instead of the Passwords app for password autofill in Safari and other apps.

*Available only in certain countries and regions.

Click on any of these categories and you can change the default apps. If you don’t have a category of third-party apps downloaded to your iPhone, that category will show you Apple’s apps or nothing.

Can’t I change my default app before?

In some cases yes. When Apple releases iOS 14 In 2020, an update lets you change your iPhone’s default email and browser apps. Prior to iOS 18.2, you could also change a few other categories, such as the keyboard, but the options were scattered throughout Settings.

In iOS 18.2, your iPhone collects these categories into one place, and the update adds a few others, like Messaging and Calls.

For more information on iOS 18, see below iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.1 and our iOS 18 Cheat Sheet. You can also check what might be going on with your iPhone in the following ways: iOS 18.3.