On this page
paste a URL. find out if it opens the app you think it opens.
what this tool does
Takes a deeplink (a Universal Link, an App Link, a custom-scheme URL, a Firebase Dynamic Link replacement, a Branch link, a smart link) and simulates opening it across the environments your viewers actually click from: iOS Safari, iOS Chrome, the TikTok in-app browser on iOS and Android, the Instagram in-app browser on both, Threads', Messenger's, Snapchat's, Android Chrome, and the Android system browser. For each environment, it tells you what actually happens — does the app open, does it fall back to a web page, does the link die at a system dialog, does the deeplink chain break partway through?
The output is a matrix. Rows are environments. Columns are: outcome, final URL, app opened (yes/no), hops, notes. Every row links to a deeper writeup if the outcome was a failure mode the tool recognizes.
why this matters
URLGenius has a deeplink tester. It works. It tests whether your deeplink, opened from a known-good environment, resolves to the app. That's the easy half of the problem — and it's the half that's been solved since 2018.
The half that's not solved is whether your deeplink survives being clicked from inside an in-app browser in the first place. A perfectly-configured Universal Link can be perfectly broken by TikTok's webview, which intercepts the click, refuses to hand the URL off to the system, and opens its own internal renderer instead. The user sees a web page where they expected the app. Your Universal Link "works" — it's just never reached.
Same for Android App Links inside Instagram's webview. Same for Firebase Dynamic Links replacements inside Messenger. Same for any deeplink scheme that depends on the system handing the URL to the operating system rather than rendering it in a webview.
This tester runs the test that matters: not does the deeplink resolve, but does the deeplink resolve when clicked from the place your viewer actually clicks it. That's the failure mode URLGenius's tester doesn't expose, and it's the failure mode that's killing 30–70% of mobile attribution for creators driving traffic from TikTok and Instagram bios.
For the underlying mechanism — why webviews intercept and why Universal Links don't survive the handoff — see /guides/universal-links-vs-deep-links, /guides/firebase-dynamic-links-replacement, and /guides/in-app-browser-cookies-explained. For the application to a specific destination — Amazon, Spotify, Shopify — the /fix/ cluster has the destination-specific failure analyses.
what you'll see
URL input. One field. Paste a URL. Big Test button.
Optional advanced toggle. Lets you specify a fallback URL, a target app's iOS bundle ID and Android package name (for stricter testing), and whether to follow up to N redirects.
Run state. A progress bar while the tool walks through environments. Twelve or so environments depending on platform mix; each takes a few seconds.
Result matrix. A table with rows per environment:
Environment Outcome App opened Final URL Hops Notes iOS Safari PASS yes tiktok://user/profile/...1 clean Universal Link resolution iOS Chrome PASS yes (same) 1 iOS — TikTok in-app FAIL no https://www.tiktok.com/@handle3 webview intercepted; URL opened in-place, never handed to system iOS — Instagram in-app FAIL no (web fallback) 2 same — webview rendered the URL Android Chrome PASS yes (app opened) 1 App Link verified Android — TikTok in-app REDIRECT no (web fallback) 2 app handoff suppressed inside webview Android — Instagram in-app FAIL no (web fallback) 2 Messenger in-app REDIRECT no (web fallback) 2 Snapchat in-app FAIL no (broken) 4 redirect chain broke at hop 3 Each FAIL or REDIRECT row links to the writeup on that specific failure mode, with the linkboo escape technique that resolves it.
Summary verdict. One line: "Your deeplink works in 4 of 9 tested environments. The 5 failures are all in-app browsers — fixable with an escape layer."
Compare-with-linkboo button. Optional: regenerate the same matrix but with the URL wrapped in a linkboo short link. Shows the matrix again, with the previously-failing rows now passing because the escape flow intercepts the webview before the deeplink is ever invoked. This is the conversion CTA.
who this is for
Mobile developers who built a perfectly valid Universal Link, tested it in Safari, watched it work, deployed it, and then started getting bug reports they couldn't reproduce. The bug reports are coming from viewers clicking the link inside TikTok or Instagram. This tool surfaces that.
Growth and attribution engineers debugging a deeplink chain across platforms. The matrix view is the fastest way to see where in the environment grid your chain breaks.
Creators and agencies with technical-enough team to read a result matrix. Most creators will skip this tool and use the in-app browser detector instead. This one is for the developer reader.
Migration teams moving off Firebase Dynamic Links (deprecated 2025) who need to verify their replacement deeplink behaves identically across the environments FDL used to handle.
currently in development
We're building this. The single-environment simulation is straightforward; the matrix view and the in-app-browser-specific simulators are the work. The TikTok and Instagram webview behaviors change with each major app version, and the test harness has to track them.
Get notified when the tester ships.
in the meantime
If you need to test today:
- URLGenius's deeplink tester is solid for the basic environment grid (iOS Safari, Android Chrome). Open URLGenius's tester{rel="nofollow"} — it won't expose the in-app-browser dimension, but for verifying that your raw Universal Link or App Link resolves, it works.
- Apple's documentation on testing Universal Links is at developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-associated-domains{rel="nofollow"} — the canonical reference.
- Google's App Links Assistant in Android Studio simulates App Link resolution and surfaces verification errors. Use it for the Android side.
- Manual webview test: Post your link in a private TikTok account's bio. Click it from your own viewer side. Note what happens. Repeat for Instagram. Slow, but it's the ground-truth check until our tester ships.
related
Continue reading:
- Universal Links vs deep links
- Firebase Dynamic Links replacement
- In-app browser cookies, explained
- iOS Universal Links setup
- Android App Links setup
Related tools:
- In-app browser detector — the consumer-facing version of the same idea
- AASA validator — if your Universal Link doesn't resolve in Safari either, start here
- Assetlinks validator — Android equivalent
- User-agent checker
Destination failures the tester surfaces: