The European Union has imposed significant changes to the Apple ecosystem to comply with the Digital Markets Act. In addition, this law prevents certain functions and services relevant to the Big Apple, such as Apple Intelligence, from delaying their launch in these countries. iOS 18.2 incorporates one of the changes required by the EU but all over the world. This is a section that allows change default iOS and iPadOS apps for a series of actions. Below, all the information.
iOS 18.2 includes a default application system
The EU has forced Apple to prevent official apps from being the default, even iOS 18.2 will allow the removal of native apps such as the App Store, Safari, Messages, Camera and Photos. All of these changes are happening thanks to pressure from the EU and its Digital Markets Act. Actually, iOS 18.2 beta 1 includes a system to modify default applications throughout the ecosystem, a modification inherited from EU obligations.
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All the news from iOS 18.2 beta 1
The user will be able to change which apps are default for which different action. Apple has made available to the user a section in Settings > Applications > Default applications in which you can choose an application as a reference for a specific action. For the moment, here are those that have been implemented:
- Messages
- Calls
- Call screening
- Internet browser
- Passwords and codes
- Keyboard
If we click on each of these elements we will access a screen where they will appear all applications that can perform this action and the user will have to choose which application they want to have by default. For example: web browser and Google Chrome, Safari, DuckDuckGo or Firefox. It is expected that The number of services to choose will depend on the obligations of each region, the EU being the one which will impose the most obligations.
And this is finally something interesting since apparently this function is not only implemented in the European Union but will also be available in the United States. For now, The first beta of iOS 18.2 shows this function but it is not known if Apple will finally include it, even if everything seems to indicate yes.
