I'm trying to find an android mastodon app that can handle links from outside the app and open them in the app. Tusky is not going to implement this feature request and I haven't seen anything from the official app nor Fedilab.

It really feels like not being able to open mastodon links in an app is what's holding me back from using Mastodon more. I don't always find Mastodon content from within and is like to be able to interact with them more.

all 22 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I need to release an update to refresh the supported domains soon, but I made an app that does the work of maintaining the giant list of possible domains and helps you set it as the default for all of them.

Not every client is supported, but there are a few options.

https://github.com/zacharee/MastodonRedirect/

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago

This is the best way IMO, and it supports a lot of different apps. I use both the Lemmy and Mastodon versions, and they both work nicely

[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks. This did the trick. Any chance you'll make Lemmy redirect compatible with Voyager?

[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

Voyager doesn't have a way to send it links.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There is no easy way to implement it at the app level, because apps have no way of knowing whether any given link is a mastodon link or not

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Yeah, you would have to maintain a list of all Mastodon instance domain names, and Google requires this list to be baked in at build time of the app, so updating it requires updating the whole app and there's no way to dynamically detect that this link is a Mastodon link.

This isn't to say that it can't be done, Newpipe does this for Invidious/Piped instances, but yeah, it's a good bit of work...

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

it doesn't report itself as mastodon in the header or something? That would have been useful.

edit: yeah, no. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/23939

[–] GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Maybe some browser extension for like firefox mobile?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What I could theoretically imagine, is that an extension could give it a custom URL scheme, like mastodon://mastodon.social/v1/..., and then the various Mastodon apps could register an intent/open handler for that. But yeah, again, quite a bit of effort.

Alternatively, the apps could offer a secondary Share-action, which tries to open the link instead of creating a post from it...

[–] GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

That's a good idea

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It can't query this info externally occasionally...?

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 8 months ago

No. It must be in the app already. It's for security reasons.

[–] ademir@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Moshidon

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

As has been said, this is not easily possible, but a workaround in Fedilab is to copy the link and paste it into the search bar inside the app. So, not super convenient, but at least you'll be logged in and can interact with the post. This might also work with the other apps, I'm not sure...

[–] grant@toast.ooo 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Mastodon on iOS adds a button to the URL share sheet to open any url within Mastodon, and if it’s an ActivityPub object, will load the post inside Mastodon

Does the Android version have something similar?

[–] Mocha@discuss.online 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

SubwayTooter might be able to do that, I think.

https://github.com/tateisu/SubwayTooter