It's kind of interesting that an app developer needs to prove they've got permission from the copyright holders to display a website, but Safari can display them all just like that.

Yeah, what allows the Safari app creators to display arbitrary web content?

Given the "back" link from Safari to your app since iOS 11? (10?) - this is the right solution IMHO.

Especially with the swipe gestures on the new phones since the X, my pet peeve are apps that use web views inside their app inside of just opening Safari.

The worst offender is the Gmail app since half the links I click on there interact with cookies in the Safari app (account activation, notifications, etc). And Gmail will even keep nagging me to install Chrome which I will never do. Ugh, I really need to switch away from Gmail.

And it keeps on ignoring the "don't ask me about Chrome / Safari again" toggle...

They're doing the same in the YouTube app, and even if you choose "Safari" they're not opening Safari, but showing an in-app webview to siphon every last bit of your browsing activity. Truly disgusting.

this ain’t it

I don’t want my twitter and RSS reader app exploding my safari tab count. I look at articles all the time in those apps and decide not to open them in safari.

Yes, I don't know about others but I actually prefer this, I would see it as an improvement, URLs should be opened in a browser not the app, that way you have the full functionality enabled, but then again that's just my personal taste.

On iOS, SFSafariViewController gets you the best of both worlds. The browser is in-app, but you essentially get a full Safari experience.

I agree. I also like to bookmark pages to read later. I hate it when I am required to go through additional step to open a page in web browser.

Or even just SFSafariViewController set to automatically enter reader mode. Then you're not downloading/displaying content from other sites, but you're still keeping users within your app.

That seems even worse tbh. You are of course still downloading their content, but now you're also leaving out any money making possibilities the host site may have had in place. Even less likely to be considered "permitted".

Reader mode (and the ability to enable it by default [0]) are built-in features—and ones that are used quite frequently by other apps.

Downloading and displaying content from websites in general (not a specific site(s) that you have permission for) seems much less common. I can't think of any other app I've ever seen that does that.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/sfs...