Disable / Uninstall Mail app in Lion

I'm running Sparrow mail client and would love to disable Mail.app, which keeps opening from time to time.

Solution 1:

You could try selecting the Mail icon in the Applications folder, select Get Info (⌘I), and under permissions, set Everyone to no access. That should prevent the program from launching.

Solution 2:

From Apple Support, the steps to switch to a different mail reader are:

1. Open Mail (/Applications/Mail)
2. From the Mail menu, choose Preferences
3. Click the General button
4. Choose your desired default email application from the "Default email reader" pop-up menu.

This article also provides instructions to change the default mail app by editing the appropriate plist configuration.

To change the default email application, use Webmailer. This Apple.SE post has several answers that discuss the use of this utility.