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Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced it's an abuse of power; it's a feature any developer can take advantage of. Your apps get their own protocol, so you can deep-link into one using a URI. But you can also register them to open certain contents natively.

I'm not sure how it works, maybe there's some metadata in the HTML. You can see the same thing in action with the Jira app on Cataline now - any Jira link you click will load up and render in the native app.

That said, it's definitely a problem when you're redirecting these links to things you don't actually support any more, without any way to opt out.

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In Android, an App's manifest designates which deep links it can handle. Then when the user clicks on a link, it gives the user the option of which app to use when there are multiple apps that can handle it.

Maybe since at one point you did tell it you want to use news to handle it, it keeps going back to it? Although that means most likely the News app was not updated to remove support for that link. Or maybe iOS deep links work differently? (I only use Android)

AFAIU on iOS there are two types of deep linking. 1) Universal Links, which allow owners of domains to launch an app instead of Safari. For example, you might own the domain myawesomeapp.com, and therefore can redirect urls to e.g. myawesomeapp.com/do_things to launch your app. 2) Protocol links, these are completely locked down by iOS and there is no way to subvert them. For example, mailto links always open the mail app.

You can also register your own protocol IIRC, eg “myawesomeapp://do_things”

And they’re first come first serve hence the shift to universal links which have terrible UX. There’s really not a good secure solution on iOS.

issue with ios is that there is never any control over who handles what links. Apps can register custom protocols, but for common protocols that have an apple default (https, http, mailto being the main ones) you are stuck with what they decide. No option to even install an alternate such as Chrome or Gmail, and be prompted. And similarly, even though it's not a protocol, but more like a filetype, Apple News hijacks feed URLs and there's nothing anyone but Apple can do to change that.

In what situation do you not get a prompt?

You can install an alternative like chrome or google search (chrome but better UX IMO) And when you do, anything that opens a page that isn't an embedded webkitview prompts me to pick a browser. It even suggests chrome which I don't have installed (I guess I installed it once and it remembers the protocol registration)

Ios doesn't support changing default apps. If you get a prompt, it's because that app has independently implemented browser choice. This is also why you can select browsers that aren't installed, because there's no way of checking whether anything's installed.

Were you to use the default mail application, for example, its links would always open in Safari.

It's reasonable when it's your own custom protocol, but it's a very different story for an open one that has multiple clients.

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