[feature] Offer the app as a candidate for opening URL/link

[strk]

The most frustrating experience for new users is the inability to interact with ActivityPub posts whose link is shared to them via some other mean (ie: email, IM...).

The frustration comes from ending up visiting the server with a web browser and not having the possibility to interact without providing the profile identifier to let the server redirect you to your profile server.

Instead, if the Mastodon app offered to open such link the user would have less pain in interacting, because the app would already know how to authenticate self with the server.

If the opened link is not found to be recognizable as an ActivityPub post the app could simply tell this to the user and ask again to the system which other app should open it.

This issue is really making adoption hard

[grishka]

Unfortunately, there is no good way to do this.

There are two options:

• Register the app to handle all https:// URLs, effectively making it pretend to be a web browser. Not good and very confusing to people who don't quite understand how the intent system works, which is most people. Also I'm not sure whether Google Play would allow this. Also I'm not sure how you would use the actual web browser in this configuration, because as far as the system is concerned, the Mastodon app is the default browser. So would you have configure that in the app? Meh.
• Hardcode all known fediverse servers into the app. They do have to be hardcoded into the manifest — you can't add such intent filters at runtime as far as I know. Hardly feasible and definitely not scalable.

[nethad]

@grishka what about a separate URI scheme? I could see an "open in app" button that goes to fedi://example.social/@user

Ideally all fedi apps would adopt this or any other URI scheme

[strk]

web+ap was suggested in the past for this, search for fedilinks

[heschy2]

@grishka what about a separate URI scheme? I could see an "open in app" button that goes to fedi://example.social/@user

Ideally all fedi apps would adopt this or any other URI scheme

There is this but I dont know if anyone ever implemented it.

There is also the aforementioned web+ap thingy, that has been implemented by Fedilabs afaik.

I would personally prefer the fedi:// one but in the end what counts is that everyone uses the same so it actually works