Is Outlook your favorite mail app or do you prefer to use another mail program, such as Thunderbird from Mozilla? Then of course you want this mail app to open by default in Windows 11, if you click on an email address in your browser, for example. Fortunately, you can set up a default mail app quite easily. We explain how you do that in this article.
Enter Windows 11 to the Settingsapp by using the combination of the Windows button and ‘i’ key on your keyboard or go to the settings via the start menu. In the Settings app, on the left, choose apps and then for Default apps. In the search bar below Set Application Defaults type in the name of your mail app and when it shows up in the search results, click on it.
Mailto: links
Important is now the cup MAILTO that refers to the mailto: links that you sometimes come across on the internet. These links point to an e-mail address and when you click on such a link you can send an e-mail directly from your mail program to this address. You therefore want to immediately enter your own mail service when you click on such a link.
below MAILTO you can see which app opens when you click the mailto: link. In the case below, this is the Chrome browser. The link will then open as an empty tab in your browser: that is actually of no use to you. If you want to change this in another app, you can click Google Chrome click.
You will then be asked How do you want to open this? and choose the desired app. Every time you click on a mailto: link, your chosen mail app will open by default. There is no separate app for the Gmail app (yet), but you can link your Gmail account to the Mail app in Windows to be able to send mail directly from your account when you click a mailto: link.
In this article, we’ll explain how to bring all your accounts into the Mail app.
.eml files
You can also set a default app for .eml files in the default apps menu. These are e-mail messages that have been stored as text by an e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail. It contains the content of the message, along with the subject, sender, recipient(s), and date of the message.
Below .eml you can do the same as with MAILTO change the default app and then .eml files will open in that app.
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