Change Chrome to the Default Web Browser
Feb 23, 2011 - 5 Comments
A friend called me last night frantic that suddenly Safari had become the default web browser on her Mac again, presumably the change was caused by a software update but nonetheless they were very annoyed since they prefer Chrome and couldn’t figure out how to set it back. If you find yourself in this situation, here’s how to switch back to use Chrome as your full time web browser:
Set Chrome to be the Default Web Browser
- From the Chrome menu, select Preferences
- Click on the “Basics” tab
- At the bottom of the Basics preferences, click on “Make Google Chrome my default browser”
That’s all there is to it, now all links will open in Chrome again.
You can usually set the default browser to whatever you want via the apps preferences, but if all else fails, you can always just set the default web browser in Mac OS X through Safari (yes, you use Safari to set the default even if you choose not to use Safari as the default).
I just changed mine back – Chrome seems to get very buggy after a couple of weeks… one reset of safari and life is fast again
I like Firefox over Chrome. The latter slows down, has no reliable add-blocker, and no development plugins that I could find. I need my dev plugins.
I have a question, do you know if there is an app or option that makes certain programs open links in certain specific browsers. e.g. links from mail.app open in safari but links from twitter.app open in chrome.
There is one plugin I know for Firefox, but I am not aware of other plugins which do the same for e.g. Chrome, Safari etc.
Here is the FF plugin “Open With”
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with/
Well now I just feel stupid. I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome after Firefox started becoming too buggy, and was generally happy with Chrome’s performance. The only thing I didn’t figure out was how to get Chrome to open as my default browser. Next time, I’ll look harder for the button that says exactly that.