Not a fan of Safari? You can change the default web browser on your iPhone or iPad quite easily. If you prefer Google’s Chrome, you can ditch Safari when tapping links on your phone or tablet. And that’s not the only option.
Making the switch is easy, though the setting is somewhat hidden. Here’s what you do.
Make Safari, DuckDuckGo, etc. your go-to browser
Recent headlines made much of the European Union forcing Apple to let iPhone users set a range of third-party applications as the defaults in place of Apple’s own. This might leave those in other parts of the world feeling jealous. But it’s possible for anyone to replace the default web browser on iPhones and iPads.
This isn’t new. It’s been an option since iOS 14 launched in 2020. Nevertheless, it’s possible many iPhone and iPad users aren’t aware. If that’s you, read on to see how to make your browser of choice the default on your phone or tablet.
An important caveat
Before we get started, it’s important for you to know the browser must expressly support this feature. We know for sure that Chrome, DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Edge and Firefox all work as the default browser in iOS and iPad OS. But if you prefer an obscure one, it’s possible it can’t become your default iPhone browser.
How to change the default iPhone or iPad browser
Image: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Rather than putting the setting somewhere logical, Apple hid the controls to make a web browser the default inside that app’s own settings. To see how, let’s use Chrome as an example.
1. Go to the Settings application on either iPhone or iPad, scroll down in the left column until you get to the listing for Chrome, then tap on it.
2. On the resulting page, you’ll see an option for Default Browser App. Tap on it.
3. That brings up a list of all the web browsers you could set as your iPhone’s default web browser. In our example, those are DuckDuckGo, Safari and Chrome. Choose the one you want, then leave the Settings application. That’s all there is to it.
To test this change, go to an email with a URL in it, and tap on the link. Your chosen browser should open instead of Safari.
Going forward, here’s hoping iOS and iPadOS get a window in the Settings app dedicated to specifying default apps, as is true in the European Union. That would make this process more logical.
We originally published this post on how to change the default browser on iPhone or iPad on September 18, 2020. We updated it with new information.
