How to change the default email app on your iPhone

It doesn’t matter who you are. There’s simply no way of getting around the fact that everyone needs to use email at some point in their lives. Just because that’s true, however, doesn’t mean you need to stick with an inferior email app on your iPhone if you don’t want to.

Starting with the release of iOS 14 in 2020, Apple finally did one of the things it should have done years ago: Let users change their default web browsers and email apps. 

Safari and the iPhone Mail app are both perfectly usable, but freedom is always a good thing. Whether you like Gmail, ProtonMail, or Outlook, you can tell your iPhone to route all email-related activity straight to the corresponding mobile app.

That’s good in and of itself, but what’s even better is how easy it is to do this. Here’s how:

1. Make sure you have the app you want to use installed on your iPhone.

2. Open the Settings app and scroll down to the alphabetical list of every app on your iPhone. Tap the email app you’d like to set as your default.

3. You should see a “Default Mail App” setting in the next menu. Tap that and then select which app you want to be your default email app.

And voila! You’ve done it. Whenever you do anything pertaining to email on your iPhone, it’ll automatically get directed to that app instead of the default Mail app. It’s a shame iPhones had to be around for more than a decade before users could do this, but hey, better late than never. Godspeed and good luck.