Not really. You can do that for web, or email, or maps, but for the most part - and especially with third party apps for things like Reddit, or Twitter - you're forced into opening links in Safari. You MAY be given the option to open the link in an app once opening in Safari but in my experience it doesn't always work.
It's fundamentally a worse experience than it is on Android, in every way.
What I want (as a user, not a developer) is to be able to force an app to open links in Safari, not the app's built-in webview, and to force links to certain URLs to open in the app of my choosing, not Safari (in that case).
This is really, really basic stuff. Why don't we have this capability?
> What I want (as a user, not a developer) is to be able to force an app to open links in Safari, not the app's built-in webview
In some cases apps use the browser to render the app's UX, via hooks added to the browser to invoke native code (e.g. to expose native platform functionality that is not web accessible). This web content may only exist within the app sandbox's filesystem, or may be externally hosted.
But from a systems API standpoint, this is no different from Facebook opening links in their own internal browser so they can glean metrics on what links you are following.
So what you are talking about is actually a store policy (e.g. apps without the browser entitlement must open third-party web content via this other mechanism).
> and to force links to certain URLs to open in the app of my choosing, not Safari (in that case).
For HTTPS in general, IIRC the user can select from a list of apps with the browser entitlement.
Apps can already opt into their own HTTPS URL support for several years via Universal Links - but they have to get the domain owner to allow it to prevent abuse. They've been able to take over URI schemes outside of a reserved list since the App Store launched.
The android equivalent system (App Links IIRC) allows non-affiliated apps to take over certain HTTPS URL function, but the user has to enable it in settings - and will get a chooser if multiple applications can support the interface.
Ahh.. I see. Yeah, that's structurally unlikely to happen any time soon on iOS. "open a link" is not a shared idea across apps. In one app that'll be a webview, where the OS could get involved. In another app it'll just be a button - the OS doesn't know if that button is perceived by the user as a "link" or not.
So I think it'd have to be an app-review policy, and I suspect they'd have a LOT of pushback if they tried to enforce something like that.
They could have structured the OS so that each transition to a new view was a request to the operating system to open a URL, and the OS handled the routing to the browser, this app, a different app - but without that kind of a structure I don't think this very doable.
