While many OEM-specific UI layers and custom ROMs have offered it for quite some time, stock Android has never featured a "default app" management interface for some reason. This doesn't really make much sense, considering Google introduced this whole default app thing to Android and it remains one of the OS's nicest features.

With Android M, it looks like we're finally getting a way to manage defaults without just using the draconian "reset app preferences" button. Here's what it looks like - just go to the apps area in settings and hit the 3-dot menu.

From there, you'll see the "Default Apps" option, and then a list of activities mapped to specific applications. Note that this isn't the same as the app linking UI, which has its own menu, and is substantially more specific. This is just for universal system functions like the browser, dialer, and SMS app.

Definitely another handy "M" feature we hope makes it into the release.