Apple and Meta both benefit here

The failure sits exactly where two business models meet, which is why it has survived years of complaints.

6 August 2026 · PAD team

Apple's side

Apple redirects apps.apple.com to the itms-appss:// scheme so the native store opens instead of a web page. That is deliberate: the native store converts better, handles payment, and keeps the transaction inside Apple's system.

Whether a third-party browser can follow that scheme is not Apple's problem. From its side the redirect is correct behaviour.

Meta's side

Instagram and Facebook open links in their own WebView so the visitor stays inside the app and their behaviour stays measurable. A visitor who leaves for Safari is a visitor Meta stops seeing.

Implementing the scheme hand-off would mean deliberately sending people out of the app. Meta ships apps where that hand-off does not happen, and Instagram's escape scheme has never been documented.

Where that leaves you

Both decisions are rational for their owners. The cost lands entirely on the advertiser, who pays for the tap, and on the user, who wanted the app and got a white screen.

Nobody in this arrangement is doing anything wrong, and the outcome is still that your money disappears.

Why it will not be fixed

There is no regulatory pressure, no public metric, no user complaint volume large enough to matter. Most people who hit a blank page assume the link is broken and move on, so it never becomes anyone's support burden.

Meanwhile the fix on the publisher side is undocumented and could stop working with any app update, which is exactly what happened to Facebook detection in iOS 26.

The practical conclusion

Treat this as a permanent condition of the platform rather than a bug awaiting a patch. Build the escape into your links, measure whether taps arrive, and check that measurement periodically, because the ground moves without announcements.