1877265 - In Fenix Settings, "Open links in apps" is too ambiguous of a preference name

Status: NEW

(Firefox for Android :: App Links, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Steps to reproduce

1. Open the Settings pane in Firefox for Android.
2. Scroll down to the Advanced section and look at the second entry, and think about what might happen if you change that setting.

Expected behavior

The wording should be reasonably unambiguous.

Actual behavior

The wording is ambiguous; it's called "Open links in apps", which could quite-reasonably be interpreted as either:
(A) Should Firefox be used as the web-view ("custom tab", etc) to open links that you tap in external apps?
...OR:
(B) Should Firefox invoke external apps to open certain links that are tapped within Firefox?

Device information

• Firefox version: 124
• Android device model: Pixel 8
• Android OS version: 14

Any additional information?

The correct interpretation is (B), but the current wording sounds closer to (A), to me at least (particularly given the complexity of custom tabs & default browsers etc. on mobile operating systems, which makes it reasonable that a browser might have a setting for users to control whether or not that browser gets used to open links in other apps' web-views)

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot of this UI in Firefox for Android settings

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot after you tap the setting

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

See attached screenshots for how this looks right now, which IMO don't make it clear enough whether this setting has meaning (A) vs (B) (from comment 0) vs. some other meaning.

RE alternate wording: instead of

Open links in apps

...maybe one of the following might be clearer, or might inspire something clearer that we could use:

Open links using external apps
Launch apps to handle associated links

Whatever wording we use, it also might be clearer if we just added a short paragraph on the screen where this setting's value is chosen, like we have for other settings -- e.g. "HTTPS-Only Mode" gets an explanatory sentence and a link to a "Learn More" page; ETP gets a whole bunch of paragraphs explaining the feature and the various options.

We don't need a ton of explanation here, particularly given that this is under "Advanced", but we need at least enough text to make it unambiguous which of aforementioned interpretations (A)/(B) this setting actually corresponds to.

Comment 4

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:tthibaud, could you have a look please?

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