If you open a link in TikTok's or Instagram's apps, they don't open using the native browser, but using the respective social network's built-in browser. This causes serious privacy concerns for once, but according to stackoverflow, also interferes with basic functions such as printing the website.
For more information see Adrian Holovaty's blogpost or Felix Krause.
Especially tiktok is notorious here: While Instagram's in-app browser offers a "Open in Chrome" link, TikTok does not allow that at all and even hides the browser URL from you.
I cobbled together some stackoverflow answers and github gists I found on the
internet out of personal curiosity (see index.html sourcecode for
references). A lot of advice is outdated, and so will this website for sure.
This repo provides a website with a button that breaks the website out of the in-app browser. Tested as of 2022 with TikTok's and Instagram's in-app browser on Android. I don't have an iOS device to test on.
To try out the demo, you can:
- Open the tiktok (or instagram) app.
- Browse to a popular creator's profile that contains a youtube link
- Tap the youtube link (will open in-app browser)
- Enter
google.cominto the youtube searchbar - There will be at least one video that has a link to Google in its video descripton, tap it.
- Search for this repository (or my username).
- Browse to the above link.
- Tap the "Break out" button and see how the website re-opens in hopefully the native browser.
- You may get prompts when clicking "Break me". Certainly on iOS, and perhaps also on certain Android versions.
- Detect in-app browsers, i.e. don't rely on button-press