It is possible to prevent native mobile apps from hijacking browser hyperlinks?
Context
During the Instragram API OAuth authentication flow from our mobile website, the Instagram App hijacks the login URL link from opening in a popup window. This results in the app trying to re-open the URL previously hijacked back into a new, unconnected browser tab.
The side effects of this behavior are as follow:
- If you have multiple browsers, it opens a popup with the browser selection.
- If you opened the authentication in a new window or tab, the
window.parent
is not set, so trying to auto-close the login popup withself.close()
doesn't work. (Very important in our authentication flow).
This behavior has been observed on Android but our logs also suggests it happens on iPhone. So, again, it is possible to prevent native mobile apps from hijacking browser hyperlinks?