This article explains how to commit a crime so heinous Steve Jobs would throw a backflip in his grave: start using Outlook as the default mail app on your mac.
But, as I’ve discovered is OFTEN the case with macs, changing default apps isn’t always as intuitive as you’d hope. Few things are.
And don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying Windows is intuitive. But since Microsoft occasionally engages in anti-anticompetitive behavior (usually after the court tells them to), changing to 3rd party applications is usually straightforward. Or at least straightforwarder than it is in Apple’s little walled garden!
Fear not – I’m here to guide you through the process without making you want to throw your mac out the window.
Background: Why Would You Even Want to Do This?
Real talk for a second: Apple has no idea how to onboard people. They’re so disgustingly smug about already having everyone in their ecosystem that they don’t need to think about onboarding new users.
Sorry, did I say “everyone”? What I meant, of course, is everyone that matters.
Peasants – like me – do not matter. So it doesn’t matter if we can onboard to a mac (or the greater Apple ecosystem) or not.
And if we somehow DO end up trying to onboard, Apple will make our lives miserable in the process. Because that’s what we deserve for spending so many years in the opposing camp, be it Android, Windows or – God forbid – Chrome OS.
God, if Apple didn’t make the best products in the World, I wouldn’t spare them a single processing cycle. They’d deserve no mention on this glorious website of mine.
But they do, and now I can’t help but accept their filthy smugness and appreciate them for the stability and performance of the disgusting ecosystem they’ve built, and be amazed again and again of the incredible value these seemingly overpriced products actually offer.
Nevertheless, I don’t want to use Apple Mail. This is a no-nonsense work machine – not your toddler’s play-doh pc. And Outlook means business.
But Apple is not making this easy. So, follow my lead, and we’ll get Outlook set up as your default email client before another random email opens in Apple Mail and ruins your day.
Solution
Okay – let’s get to it! One Step-by-Step Guide to Making Outlook Your Default Email Client coming right up!
1. Open the Mail App (Yes, Really)
I know, I know—you’re here to get rid of Apple Mail, not open it. But MacOS, in its infinite wisdom, only lets you change the default email client from within the Mail app (and only if you’ve successfully onboarded – which you probably haven’t).
So, go ahead and open it.
2. Fix Apple Mail
Since Apple never bothered to test this for people who haven’t been soaked in their Kool-Aid since birth, you cannot modify mail settings without having Mail already configured.
But if you’re a sensible human being, at this point, you have probably never opened Mail (as you shouldn’t), so it’ll ask you to add an account.
This, my friend, is a trick. The only account you should ever add here is the useless piece of garbage Apple automatically provisioned for your Apple account – the icloud.com email address.
It’s not like you use it for anything else (or have it set up in any meaningful client so far), so go ahead and add it to your Mail app. You don’t want Mail to pull any emails you actually wanted to read from the server, do you?
So iCloud it is.
… but the kicker? You can’t do that.
Go ahead. Try. After entering your account details, this is what you’ll get:
And it will never, ever finish.
That’s the world-famous Apple onboarding experience. It will not recover from this. You will not be admitted.
But since we’re not those enlightened ones that have been onboarded to the ecosystem years ago, it’s fine that we need to work a little bit harder. We need to have our wits with us!
That is, if you’re being observant, it is in fact jumping to System Settings to add the account. And this should be a clue…
3. Enable synchronizing iCloud Mail
What Apple is trying (unsuccessfully) to do, without telling you, is that it’s trying to add the iCloud mail account as an “Internet Account”.
It is unable to. Because nobody bothered to test onboarding new users to the ecosystem. And that’s a recurring theme with Apple.
You need to enable “Mail” synchronization for iCloud. This little dude here:
But since System Settings is frozen (understandably so – you tried to use Apple Mail, so it’s perfectly reasonable that you will be punished) so you need to unfreeze it first.
In Windows we have this beautiful UI tool called “taskkill.exe” that you can use through a window called “Terminal”.
On mac os, you’re unfortunately stuck doing this incredibly complicated set of maneuvers in Activity Monitor:
Or you could open your terminal of choice and run this:
ps -ax | grep "System Settings"
> yields the pid
kill <pid>And then enable Mail:
4. Open Mail Settings
Once you’ve fixed all things Apple messed up, you can reopen Mail.
Once you’ve got Mail open, click Mail in the menu bar (top-left of your screen) and select Settings (or Preferences, depending on your MacOS version).
5. Change the Default Email Reader
Under the General tab, you’ll see a dropdown labeled Default email reader. Click it and select Microsoft Outlookfrom the list.
6. Close Mail and Celebrate
That’s it! You’re done. Close the Mail app, and from now on, whenever you click an email link, Outlook should open automatically.
Final Thoughts
“Am I the problem?”
Yes, that IS really my final thought around this topic.
And it’s a question I ask myself constantly.
None of my friends who have prioritized properly in the past (sold just one kidney to buy an iPhone, that is, while I was trying to get by on an Android) had any of these troubles when they got onboarded to the Apple ecosystem by their parents. I’m essentially a trailblazer – blazing through a trail that has completely overgrown since everyone else followed it already years ago!
But I’ve come to accept that it’s my destiny to just constantly run into this stuff.
My Citroën software update that should fix the modem fails because it can not connect to remote server because the modem is so bad. It says online it has OTA – it does not, not under normal circumstances and definitely not with a modem this bad!
My Kia prompts to accept it’s “updated user agreement” every single time I start the car up. Clicking “Accept” fails – because of course it does! Getting past that requires a software update with a usb stick (it says online it has OTA – it does not). Kia does not have support.
My WhatsApp just randomly locked itself a few months ago and I had to reconfigure it on my app and restore a backup. Luckily, I have automatic and continuous backups set up, so I only lost 3.5 months of data. Because apparently “automatic and continuous backups to Google Drive” does not mean what I thought it does.
I’d be more upset about that if Apple’s cool “Migrate from Android to iPhone” hadn’t nuked my WHOLE WhatsApp history (including all media items over the years) a couple of months later by “sealing” my account for moving – and then failing to move it. Couldn’t be restored to an Android either.
At least AirThings sensors and other IoT stuff “just works”. Right after I had to remove PiHole AND reconfigure my name servers in Deco – breaking other stuff in the process, but at least it fixed air quality measuring.
And I’m not even going to jump into Windows Updates. I’ve left that behind so I’m not even going to go there.
The silver lining is that unless I ran into all of this stuff, I would not have any topics to write about.
Anyway…
Switching your default email client on mac os isn’t the most intuitive process, but once you know where to look, it’s a quick fix. Now, go forth and enjoy the superior email experience that Outlook provides – without Apple Mail (hopefully ever) sneaking back into your life.
He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.
This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.
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