iOS 14 Bug Will Bork Your Default Mail and Browser Settings

With iOS 14 now officially here, it was only a matter of time before we started hearing about the bugs. There are always bugs—some are more inconsequential than others.

One such silly albeit annoying issue that’s been discovered in the day and a half since iOS 14 rolled out wide to the public has to do with a settings change unique to the software update. In a merciful gesture for those of us who use browsers or email clients outside of Apple’s own, Apple will now allow users to change their default apps for these functions. This is great! But as noted by a number of outlets, as well as on Twitter, Apple will wipe those settings every time you restart your iPhone. Not great.

Is this a pain in the butt? Yes, yes it is. Presumably, this will be patched in a coming update to iOS 14, as with any other quirks that Apple users should dig up in the coming weeks. In the meantime, don’t be alarmed if your phone defers to Apple apps after you’ve customized your settings to default to, say, Chrome and Outlook.

If the fact that you can even customize your email and browser settings in this way is news to you, look, I get it. A lot of more minor updates were buried by significant changes in iOS 14. Widgets! App Clips! An App Library for all of the junk you want on your phone without having to look at it! But if shifting away from Apple’s own apps appeals to you, we can walk you through how to do it.

First of all, make sure everything is updated—your software version as well as your apps. (Don’t forget to create a backup before updating to iOS 14!) Once that’s taken care of, head to your Settings. To change your default browser, scroll down to the app you’d prefer to use over Safari and click on it (for example, if you prefer Google’s browser, select Chrome). From there you should see an option for Default Browser App; click on it. You should be able to select the browser you’d like to use instead of Safari.

The same applies to your preferred email client. Outlook and Edge are currently supported, but Gmail is not yet.

To avoid having to change these preferences frequently, just, you know, try to keep the reboots to a minimum—at least until Apple rolls out an update.