How to Clear “Open by Default” Apps from Your Android Device

Android Smartphones For Dummies

Fret not, gentle reader and Android user. The settings you choose for the Complete Action Using prompt on your Android device can be undone. For example, if you select the PDF Viewer app, you can undo that choice by following these steps:

Open the Settings app.
Choose Apps & Notifications. This item is titled Apps in some releases of the Android operating system.
Choose App info. If you don’t see this item, skip to Step 4.
Choose the app that always opens. This is the tough step because you must remember which app you chose to “always” open.
On the app’s screen, choose Open by Default or Set as Default. If the item shows the text Some Defaults Set, you’re on the right track. Apps that haven’t been chosen as the default show the text No Defaults Set.
Tap the CLEAR DEFAULTS button.

After you clear the defaults for an app, you see the Open With card again. The next time you see it, however, make a better choice.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.