LinkedIn in-app browser and store links

Nobody expects this from LinkedIn, which is exactly why B2B apps lose taps there without noticing.

6 August 2026 by PAD team

Same browser, same wall

LinkedIn routes links through a WebView rather than the system browser. When the destination is apps.apple.com, Apple answers with a redirect into the itms-appss:// scheme, and the WebView has no way to hand that off. The tap ends on a blank page.

For consumer apps this is a smaller channel than Instagram. For B2B tools, where a LinkedIn post is often the main distribution, it can be most of your traffic.

Detection

LinkedIn identifies itself clearly, which makes this the easy part:

if (/LinkedInApp/i.test(navigator.userAgent)) { … }

The escape

There is no documented scheme to hand a URL to the system browser from LinkedIn, so the sequence is the usual one for strict platforms. Try the store scheme directly on page load, then show a manual button within a second and a half if nothing happens.

The manual route is more viable here than elsewhere, because the audience is technical enough to find "Open in browser" in the menu. It still costs you a share of taps.

A note on desktop

A large share of LinkedIn traffic is desktop, where a store link opens the web version of the listing and there is nothing to fix. Any routing you add should detect the platform first and leave desktop visitors alone, sending them to your website or to the web store page rather than attempting an escape that makes no sense there.