Cookies and sessions in in-app browsers

Every in-app browser is effectively a fresh incognito window that forgets everything when it closes.

6 August 2026 · PAD team

Separate storage

A WebView keeps cookies in the host app's data store rather than the system browser's. Someone signed into your service in Safari arrives at your page from Instagram as an anonymous visitor, and a session created there does not carry back.

The consequences

• Login walls convert far worse in in-app traffic than the same page in a browser
• Cart contents and preferences do not carry over from earlier browser visits
• Analytics counts one person as several, inflating unique visitors
• Third-party cookies are usually blocked outright, breaking embedded tools

Designing around it

Delay anything requiring identity. If the goal is an install, you do not need the visitor logged in at all, and asking makes the funnel worse for no benefit.

Where identity is genuinely required, move the visitor to the real browser before the login step rather than after it. The same escape mechanism that gets a tap to the store gets it into Safari with the session intact.

Measurement implications

In-app traffic looks like new visitors every time. Any metric based on returning users is distorted by however much of your traffic comes from social apps, and for consumer products that share is often the majority.