How to make gmail the default email when clicking link on Mac safari?

This answer is incorrect. Gmail is not a choice among the default email readers in Mail.

If you want to open email addresses shown in Safari in a Gmail account, you have to download and initiate another app designed to do this. Then this 3rd-party app will show up in as an e-mail reader in the Mail settings.

Don't ask me what 3rd-party app to use, I still haven't figured this out. I feel that forces are conspiring to make me install Chrome and ditch Safari, it's just too niche and apparently Apple wants it that way.

I rarely use Google Chrome, as Safari has worked for me for a decade now, but I DO have Google Chrome on my iMac, so I'm using it as my default e-mail reader, and after doing a test, my e-mail was sent out fine, and came in on my 3rd party e-mail program, which I also have a Yahoo, Gmail and iCloud e-mail addresses. A thanks to the initial question, as for whatever reason, even with all fields being correct, as to their own website, it will work when it wants to, then all of a sudden it decides to send me a message that it's not working, and giving me a choice to send that one e-mail via another choice, of which I choose 'Google' so I assume it then sends via my Gmail account just fine. But, it then reverts back to my problematic 3rd party Mac/Safari e-mail reader/sender, and then fails. Seems to be a revolving problem, so I'm hoping it's now going to work fine, if not, I'll leave another message stating so.

Hi Cormie77,

The steps you are seeking can be found within the article Change the default web browser or email app on Mac:

"Change the default email app

Make sure that the email app you want to use is already installed, then follow these steps.

1. Open the Mail app.
2. From the Mail menu in the menu bar, choose Settings (or Preferences).* 
3. Click General.
4. Choose an email app from the “Default email reader” pop-up menu. If you don't see your email app in the menu, choose Select from the menu, then select your email app from the file dialog that opens. If you're using webmail instead of an email app, you can choose a web browser in this step, but the browser might not open webmail automatically when you click email links. Some third-party browsers and webmail services might have their own settings to change this behavior.

* To change settings in Mail, you must first have added an email account in Mail. If you don't want to do that, open the other email app that you want to use, then check its settings for a similar way to set the default email reader."

Regards.