diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 0b5e6d0..4f9d77f 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ We tested the Tesseract decoder for:
 *   **Detailed Statistics:** provides comprehensive statistics output, including shot counts, error
     counts, and processing times.
 *   **Heuristics**: includes flexible heuristic options: `--beam`, `--det-penalty`,
-    `--beam-climbing`, `--no-revisit-dets`, `--at-most-two-errors-per-detector`, `--det-order-bfs` and `--pqlimit` to
+    `--beam-climbing`, `--no-revisit-dets`, `--at-most-two-errors-per-detector`, and `--pqlimit` to
     improve performance while maintaining a low logical error rate. To learn more about these
     options, use `./bazel-bin/src/tesseract --help`
 *   **Visualization tool:** open the [viz directory](viz/) in your browser to view decoding results. See [viz/README.md](viz/README.md) for instructions on generating the visualization JSON.
diff --git a/src/tesseract_main.cc b/src/tesseract_main.cc
index 08aa163..bd33a9a 100644
--- a/src/tesseract_main.cc
+++ b/src/tesseract_main.cc
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ struct Args {
   // Manifold orientation options
   uint64_t det_order_seed;
   size_t num_det_orders = 10;
-  bool det_order_bfs = false;
+  bool det_order_bfs = true;
 
   // Sampling options
   size_t sample_num_shots = 0;
@@ -382,10 +382,21 @@ int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
       .metavar("N")
       .default_value(size_t(1))
       .store_into(args.num_det_orders);
-  program.add_argument("--det-order-bfs")
-      .help("Use BFS-based detector ordering instead of geometric orientation")
-      .flag()
+  program.add_argument("--no-det-order-bfs")
+      .help("Disable BFS-based detector ordering and use geometric orientation")
+      .default_value(true)
+      .implicit_value(false)
       .store_into(args.det_order_bfs);
+  program.add_argument("--det-order-bfs")
+      .action([&](auto const&) {
+        std::cout << "BFS-based detector ordering is the default now; "
+                     "--det-order-bfs is ignored."
+                  << std::endl;
+      })
+      .default_value(true)
+      .implicit_value(true)
+      .store_into(args.det_order_bfs)
+      .hidden();
   program.add_argument("--det-order-seed")
       .help(
           "Seed used when initializing the random detector traversal "
diff --git a/viz/README.md b/viz/README.md
index 9ab04d7..1e5a51f 100644
--- a/viz/README.md
+++ b/viz/README.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# Visualization
+#Visualization
 
 This tool displays the detectors and errors from a Tesseract decoding run in 3D.
 
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ include only the lines used by the converter script:
 ```bash
 bazel build src:all && \
 ./bazel-bin/src/tesseract \
-  --sample-num-shots 1 --det-order-seed 13267562 --pqlimit 10000 --beam 1 --num-det-orders 20 --det-order-bfs \
+  --sample-num-shots 1 --det-order-seed 13267562 --pqlimit 10000 --beam 1 --num-det-orders 20 \
   --circuit testdata/colorcodes/r\=9\,d\=9\,p\=0.002\,noise\=si1000\,c\=superdense_color_code_X\,q\=121\,gates\=cz.stim \
   --sample-seed 717347 --threads 1 --verbose | \
   grep -E 'Error|Detector|activated_errors|activated_dets' > logfile.txt
@@ -19,9 +19,10 @@ python viz/to_json.py logfile.txt -o logfile.json
 ```
 
 
-The `--det-order-bfs` flag is compatible with visualization logs. Just make
-sure `--verbose` is enabled so the detector coordinates are printed for
-`to_json.py` to parse.
+The `--no-det-order-bfs` flag is compatible with visualization logs. BFS-based
+detector ordering is now enabled by default, so include this flag only if you
+want to disable it. Make sure `--verbose` is enabled so the detector
+coordinates are printed for `to_json.py` to parse.
 
 The `to_json.py` script produces `logfile.json`, which contains the detector
 coordinates and animation frames for the viewer.
@@ -31,4 +32,3 @@ coordinates and animation frames for the viewer.
 Open `viz/index.html` in a modern browser. It will automatically try to load
 `logfile.json` from the same directory. If the file picker is used, any JSON
 produced by `to_json.py` can be visualized.
-