How To Make Default Android Apps Appear As Installed Apps

Wrong app always launching when you tap an action in Android? Find out how easy it is to set the default apps in Android 10.

When you tap an action in Android, a specific application always opens; that application is called the default. This can come into play when you have more than one application installed that serves the same purpose. For example, you might have both the Chrome and Firefox web browsers installed. When you tap on a link, whichever browser is set as your default will be one to open the link.

But what happens if you don't like the currently set default option? Can you change it? You certainly can. In fact, there are a number of default apps you can set. Android 10 allows you to set defaults for the likes of:

Assistant
Web browser
Caller ID & Spam app
Home launcher
Phone
SMS

From within this same feature location, you can enable/disable Google Play Instant apps and define how each installed app will handle supported links, choosing from Open In This App, Ask Every Time, Don't Open In This App.

It's the default apps I want to focus on, so you can make sure your Android device is always opening the exact app you want, when the action in question occurs.

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What you'll need

The only thing you'll need to make this work is a device running Android 10. Although it might help to have a few extra apps installed (otherwise, there's really no need to change the default apps), even with the stock platform you can see how this is taken care of.

How to set the default browser in Android 10

Let's say we want to change the default browser from Chrome to Firefox. How do we do that? It's actually quite simple. Here's how:

Open the Settings apps.
Tap Apps & Notifications.
Tap Advanced.
Tap Default Apps (Figure A).

Figure A

In the Default Apps window (Figure B), tap Browser app.

Figure B

All of your default apps are ready to be changed.

In the resulting window (Figure C), select Firefox from the list to serve as the new default web browser app.

Figure C

Setting Firefox as the default web browser app.

Once you've made your selection, either tap the back button or (if you have gesture based navigation enabled) swipe inward from either the right or left edge of the screen. And that's it. You've just changed the default web browser app on Android 10. You can go back through the list of other possible default applications and change them as needed.

Default app settings

You might also discover that some default apps include settings you can tweak. For example, if you open the Assist app entry, you'll find a number of features that can be enabled/disabled (Figure D).

Figure D

The settings window for the default Assist app.

If you tap the gear icon associated with the Assist app, it will reveal a number of features you might not have known about (Figure E).

Figure E

And that's pretty much the gist of setting and configuring default apps in Android 10. There's nothing groundbreaking about this feature, but it sure can save you a bit of time and frustration in your daily use of the platform.

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