Hacker News Reader

Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

> MagicLinks are a mobile nightmare. Mobile email clients use their own browser and cookie jar which consume the session cookie you're trying to put into the user's main browser.

It might be howling into the void but the conclusion I reach from this is that "Mobile email clients are a nightmare".

Generally speaking, embedded browsers in mobile apps are a terrible idea and break user expectations in multiple ways.

View on HN

On the flip side, I find that opening links in isolated sessions very valuable, if not just because I don't want links sent by others to affect the Algorithm's perception of me. 80% of the time, I want to be a blank slate when interacting with in-app browsers.

I really want the choice. I hate that most iOS apps want to open links in their own webview instead of my default browser. Of course, when they DO use the default browser, I would like to have control over what context that browser uses to handle the link. Default? Private? Task-specific tab/container group? Ask me, please.

On Android, if you have more than 1 browser, and no default browser app (settings / apps / default apps / browser app), clicking a link will ask you which browser you want to use. For random one-time-usage links, I use Firefox Focus for that purpose. When it's closed it wipes all history, cookies etc. automatically.

Meanwhile if the stupid app decides to hijack the link and use in-app browser, you can't do that. And IAB typically means you can't have app and browser in parallel and switch between them from app launcher, which would be sometimes useful. Slack does that, and it's annoying. But at least you can right click> copy URL and open it manually in preferred browser.

Back in the day on the web site the marketing team always insisted links open in a new windows b/c customers won't ever come back if you direct them away. Eventually browsers let users override that nonsense. The insistence by our marketing team on all these embedded browsers reminds me of the same mindset in 2020.

I also believe links should open in the same window, but I've met people who religiously believe otherwise and they are not a part of marketing team

> It might be howling into the void but the conclusion I reach from this is that "Mobile email clients are a nightmare".

This is true, and as a user I want something better, but as a developer I need to build for what our users use.

I don't put "Site best viewed in Netscape Navigator", and I don't tell users they can only login on desktop.

Totally agree. Same apps have an option to disable this behavior, but it's a chore to track down and update everywhere. I would love it if Android had an OS level setting to disable these and send every request to the default browser. That might cost Google some data/money so sadly it'll probably never happen.

Totally agree with this statement. In my apps, I have used magic links for desktop usage but on mobile apps, I opt for an OTP approach. Solves the same problem without the mobile email client issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com