As an option, allow opening links on iOS in a SafariViewController

[mackuba]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Some subset of iOS users prefers it when apps open links in an in-app browser (SafariViewController). The advantage is that you stay in one app and don't lose context instead of being redirected to a different app and have to go back, and you don't need to manually close the tab that was opened in Safari for you.

@mergesort.me:

I hate losing context, if I end up in another app there’s a good chance I’m going to be distracted and forget what I was doing. Especially when I click an article that takes 5-10 minutes to read, I’m not going to remember that I was browsing Bluesky and go back to that.

Other subset of iOS users prefers it when apps redirect to Safari instead. Some arguments for this are listed here: https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2019/open-links-in-safari-not-safari-view-controller/

These two are hard to reconcile and they both have good points, it just depends on the personal preference. So it's pretty common for apps that include a lot of user-generated links, like social media apps, to have a switch in the settings which allows you to choose whether you want to open links in an in-app browser or in the system browser.

Describe the solution you'd like

Some examples from other apps:

Ivory:

ProtonMail:

Tweetbot (old version?):

[pfrazee]

We can consider this, I'm just somewhat inclined to avoid adding the code for something that's somewhat niche

[haileyok]

@mackuba I'm pretty sure I understand this right and you're referring to what mozzius added, which lets you open up the links in either the app or by opening safari/default browser. If not lmk.

[mackuba]

@haileyok yeah yeah, this is what mozzius added, I forgot to close this one