Phone

Your Links on a New Phone

A Restored Phone, an Email Link and a Sister’s Message

A link in an email or a message can open inside the app it came from, not in the phone’s own browser.1 This is one of those mornings, in Arjun’s kitchen.

  • Gmail opens web links inside the app. With its Open web links in Gmail box unchecked, links open in the browser of your choice instead.1
  • Facebook has a box of its own, Open links in external browser. It covers links in Facebook messages; links in posts still open inside the app.2
Arjun at a small café table with a mug of coffee, looking at his phone, a kettle and a tree in autumn colour behind him

Arjun opens a link from an email

It is a September morning, and Arjun is at the kitchen table with coffee and a new phone, restored overnight from his old one. The first thing he did was make Firefox his browser. In Gmail, a friend has sent him a link to a review. He taps it, and the review opens inside Gmail, not in Firefox.

Arjun at the café table holding his phone up in one hand, the coffee mug steaming beside him

Arjun opens a link his sister sends on Facebook

Still at the table, he opens Facebook. His sister has sent him a message with a link to a flat she might rent, and wants to know what he thinks. He taps it, and the flat opens inside Facebook too. He reads it there, then copies the link into Firefox, where he keeps the pages he means to come back to.

Arjun tracks a parcel at lunch

At lunch, the shop that sold him the phone sends an email with a link to track the case he ordered with it. It opens inside Gmail, like the review did that morning. Arjun reads where the parcel is in a page that is not his browser, closes it and goes back to his sandwich.

By one in the afternoon

Arjun had taken links opening inside the app for something a new phone did. He had no idea Gmail and Facebook each kept a switch for where links open, Gmail’s under General settings and Facebook’s under Media.

True to you

What your phone does is up to you. We think so too. So we built TrueTo to make every app behave the way you do. That’s what true to you means.

TrueTo goes into each app and changes the setting the way you would. Every one of them is reversible, one at a time.

Get TrueTo

Arjun opens a link from an email

If Arjun had used TrueTo, it would have gone into Gmail and Facebook and turned off Open web links in Gmail and turned on Open links in external browser in Facebook for him.

Arjun opens a link his sister sends on Facebook

With Open links in external browser on in Facebook, his sister’s link would have opened in Firefox.

Arjun tracks a parcel at lunch

With Open web links in Gmail turned off, the tracking page would have opened in Firefox, and each switch would have stayed his to change back, in its own app.

Open links in external browser

In Gmail, under Settings and then General settings, Arjun can turn off Open web links in Gmail himself.1 In Facebook, under Settings and then Media, he can turn on Open links in external browser.2

Sources

  1. Macaulay, Thomas, “How to disable the in-app browser on the Gmail app for Android,” The Next Web, February 5, 2022.
  2. Ellis, Megan, “Can You Turn Off Facebook’s In-App Browser? How It Works,” MakeUseOf, March 30, 2024.