Don’t like your iPhone’s default apps? Here’s how to change it

Apple released iOS 18.2 In December, more than a month after the tech giant launched iOS 18.1. The latest iPhone update brought more Apple Intelligence features to some iPhones, but it also made it easier to change your iPhone’s default apps.

Read more: Everything you need to know about iOS 18

Your default apps are the apps your iPhone automatically uses in certain situations. So, if you tap a phone number on a website, for example, your iPhone will open your phone app and make a call to that number. But if you want to use another app for phone calls, like WhatsApp, you can now make that app your default calling app for your iPhone.

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

How to change your iPhone’s default apps

1. It opens Settings.
2. handle Applications.
3. handle Default applications.

From this menu, you can choose to change different categories of default apps on your iPhone. Below are the categories you can change Apple description From both of them.

• Install the app*: Choose an alternative app market instead of the App Store to use as your default store.
• Browser application: Choose another app instead of Safari to use when opening links to web pages.
• Contact: Choose another app instead of the Phone app or FaceTime to make calls.
• Call filtering: Choose an app to use to show caller ID and block unwanted callers.
• Contactless payment application*: Choose another app to make contactless transactions using your device’s built-in technology.
• Email: Choose another app instead of the Mail app to use when opening links to send email.
• keyboard: Choose an application to use for system-wide text input capabilities.
• Messaging: Choose another app instead of the Messages app to use when opening links to send instant messages.
• Password and codes: Choose another app instead of the Passwords app to use to autofill passwords in Safari and other apps.

*Only available in certain countries and regions.

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

Wasn’t I able to change my default apps before?

In some cases yes. When Apple released iOS 14 In 2020, an update lets you change your iPhone’s default email and browser apps. You could also change some other categories before iOS 18.2, like the keyboard, but the options were scattered throughout Settings.

With iOS 18.2, the iPhone brings these categories into one place, and the update adds some more, like messaging and calling.

To learn more about iOS 18, here’s what to know iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.1 And we have Cheat sheet for iOS 18. You can also check what could be coming to your iPhone iOS 18.3.