Social deep link

Why links open inside Instagram

When you put the link to your TikTok profile in your Instagram bio, or the link to a YouTube video in a story, whoever taps it does not land in the TikTok or YouTube app: they land in Instagram's built-in browser, a window that opens inside Instagram itself. They are not signed in there, so they cannot follow you, cannot like and cannot comment, and the page often asks them to download an app they already have.

Almost all of them do it: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Messenger, X and Pinterest open outside links in their own browser, because that way their users stay inside the app. For creators it is a real problem, because the extra follower gets lost right in the most delicate step, the one from one platform to another.

How the link you make here works

You paste the normal link, the one you copy with «Share» and then «Copy link», and the tool recognises it: a profile, a video, a Short, a reel, a post, a playlist. From that link it keeps only what it needs, that is the platform, the kind of page and the name or number that identifies it, and it gives you back a Toolopoli link like toolopoli.com/a#tt/@name.

Whoever taps that link lands on a tiny page, which looks at what phone it is on and picks the right route. On Android it tries to open the app straight away, and if the app is not there it opens the web page. On an iPhone it shows an «Open in the app» button to tap once. On a computer, where social apps are usually not installed, it goes straight to the website.

There is always an «Open in the browser» link too, for whoever does not have the app or prefers not to use it.

We store nothing: where the link you paste ends up

Nowhere. The tool works in your browser, and the new link carries the destination with it: it is written after the hash, the # sign. That part of an address has a property that makes it perfect for this job: the browser never sends it to the server. When someone opens the link, the Toolopoli website receives the request for the page and nothing else; whether it holds a TikTok profile or a YouTube video is known only to the phone of whoever opens it.

So there is no database with your links, there is no list of who opened them and there is nothing that can disappear, expire or be changed by someone else: as long as the profile or the video exists, the link works. The flip side is that we cannot count clicks, and that a link you already published cannot be edited: if you change username, you make a new one.

Which links work

Profiles, channels, videos, Shorts, playlists, reels, posts, photos, groups and events on six platforms: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X and Pinterest. The link copied from the app works, so does the desktop website link and the mobile version link, even with the extra bits that apps add at the end: they are the ones after the question mark, they track the share and here they are thrown away.

TikTok and Pinterest short links work too, the ones like vm.tiktok.com or pin.it, but with a limit: on an iPhone they open the web page and not the app, because a short link can only be unwrapped by asking TikTok's server, and this page asks nobody anything. The fix is to open the short link once in the browser and paste here the full address that appears.

Instagram stories do not work, since they disappear after a day, and neither do pages that belong to none of the six platforms: a link to another site is rejected, always.

Why an iPhone needs a tap

On Android a page can ask the phone to open an app, and the phone, if the app is there, opens it. On an iPhone Apple decided otherwise: inside the browsers of apps another app only opens after a gesture by whoever is using the phone, and Instagram enforces it particularly strictly. That is why the page does not try to force anything and shows a big button: one tap and TikTok, YouTube or whatever app is needed opens.

To open apps from outside, the page uses the special addresses that each app recognises, like the ones that start with youtube:// or fb://. They have worked for years and every service of this kind uses them, but they are not documented by the companies, which can change them whenever they like. If one day an app stopped recognising them, the link would keep working all the same, opening the web page.

Why it cannot be used to send people elsewhere

A link that opens other links is the kind of tool scammers look for, so this one is built on purpose so that it is of no use to them. The code after the hash never contains an address: it contains the platform and a few values, like a username or the number of a video, and each one must follow the rules of that platform, letter by letter.

The real address is rebuilt by the page, and it is only rebuilt on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X or Pinterest. Anyone who tried to write a made-up code by hand could at most send someone to another TikTok profile: never to just any website, never to a domain that looks like the real one, never to a program. If the code does not add up, the page says the link does not work and opens nothing.

The page that opens the links loads nothing from other websites, uses no cookies, does not show up on Google and cannot be framed inside another page.

Related tools

If you want people to message you on WhatsApp with one tap, there is WhatsApp link. To put the link on a flyer or on a sign there is QR code generator. And for the bio where you will paste it there are Bio generator and Fancy fonts for bio.