Don’t let native apps hijack links, keep browsing in Brave

Brave Feature Requests iOS Requests
1

One of the main reasons for using Brave is reducing the amount of tracking data collected.

While I have some native apps installed (e.g YouTube, TripAdvisor, some publications, Google Maps) I am using brave to search for content and expect search results to be opened in the browser rather than invoking the native app’s deep-linking.

Example:

  1. Search for a topic
  2. Click a result from YouTube
  3. YouTube app is opened, Google tracks the view and associates it with the current logged in account, and will start bothering the logged-in user with recommendations.

Expected behavior:
3. YouTube link is followed in brave as if the app was not installed. Google would track the view only if I was signed in to YouTube previously (on brave).

The only way I’ve found so far to force Brave into opening a link in Brave, is to open the link in a new tab. This is quite cumbersome to do on a regular basis though…

2 Likes
2

sadly that’s outside the control of the browser itself … iOS has some pretty annoying limitations on default apps (unlike Windows, macOS, and to a large extent Android) so unless Apple are willing to relax those rules we’re going to be stuck with manual workarounds (or jailbreaking the device, which I don’t want to do)

3

Thanks for your message, however this is inaccurate.

The user can already bypass the problem (apps hijacking the links) by:

  1. opening the link in a new tab (long press > open in new tab) or
  2. copying and pasting the link to the address bar.

In conjunction with my experience in iOS, I believe the team can fix this behavior and actually turn brave into a self contained browser that does not leak data to native apps, and not a browser that will “only keep your privacy if you uninstall youtube”.

P.S. Firefox Focus does not “leak” youtube links to the native app, search results open within the Firefox app.

2 Likes
4

Adding a feature that will block the hijacking of links by installed apps would be greatly appreciated.

1 Like
5

Completely agreed. The ability to toggle this on/off (or only enabling it when in private browsing) would be amazing.

6

Brave should have a self contained (i.e private) experience, as advertised.
It does not make any sense that by one tap on YouTube/amazon search result, a supposedly private link would be opened in the amazon or YouTube apps, basically tracking even more than before (now they know I use brave because of the referrer…)