You've posted a video about your app, it's doing well, and you've put a store link in your bio. Clicks are coming in, but installs aren't. You tap the link yourself on your laptop and it works perfectly, so what's going on?
Very often the answer is the in-app browser. TikTok and Instagram don't open links in Safari or Chrome. They open them in their own built-in browser, and that browser doesn't always hand App Store or Google Play links over to the store app. On TikTok, users on iPhone often see a blunt "Action can't be completed" message. Most of them won't try again.
This post explains why it happens, how to test it properly, what you can fix yourself, and where the DIY fixes run out.
Why it happens
When you tap a link in TikTok or Instagram, the page loads inside a WebView controlled by the app. That's deliberate: it keeps people inside the app. It has a few side effects for app developers:
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Store handoffs depend on the host app. Opening the App Store or Play Store means leaving the WebView for another app. Whether that's allowed, and how, is up to the host app's WebView setup. Plain
https://apps.apple.com/...links,itms-apps://schemes and redirects that end at a store URL don't always behave the same way as they would in Safari. - Redirect chains get treated differently. Many link shorteners and link-in-bio pages redirect through one or more URLs before reaching the store. A chain that works in a normal browser can stall or fail inside an in-app browser.
- Universal Links and App Links often don't fire. iOS Universal Links and Android App Links are designed to open an installed app from a link, and they generally aren't triggered from inside another app's WebView in the same way. And if the user hasn't installed your app yet, they don't help anyway.
- Behaviour changes without notice. TikTok and Instagram update their apps often, and in-app browser behaviour can differ between versions, platforms and regions. Something that worked last month might not work today.
The result is the same for you either way: a user who was interested enough to tap never reaches your store page.
How to test it properly
The most common mistake is testing the link in a desktop browser, or by pasting it into Safari. That tells you nothing about the in-app browser. Test it where your users actually tap it:
- Put the link in your TikTok bio (or a test account's bio) and tap it from the TikTok app on a real iPhone.
- Repeat on a real Android phone. The behaviour is often different.
- Do the same on Instagram: bio link, story link sticker, and a link in a DM.
- Test with the app not installed, because that's the case for new users.
- Check after app updates. Re-test every few weeks, or whenever installs drop without an obvious reason.
If you see "Action can't be completed", a blank page, or a web version of the store page with a button that does nothing, you're losing installs.
DIY options (and their limits)
There are a few things you can build yourself. They help, but none is a complete fix.
1. A landing page with an "Open in browser" prompt
Host a simple page on your own domain and link to that instead of the store. Detect the in-app browser from the user agent (TikTok and Instagram both identify themselves there) and show a message such as "Tap ••• and choose Open in browser", with an arrow pointing to the menu.
Limits: it adds friction, a lot of people won't follow the instructions, and user-agent strings change. You also need to keep the page fast, otherwise people bounce before it loads.
2. intent:// links on Android
On Android you can try an intent:// URL that asks the system to open the Play Store, with a fallback URL:
intent://details?id=com.example.app#Intent;scheme=market;package=com.android.vending;S.browser_fallback_url=https%3A%2F%2Fplay.google.com%2Fstore%2Fapps%2Fdetails%3Fid%3Dcom.example.app;end
Limits: support depends on how the host app's WebView handles intents, so it's not reliable across apps and versions. It does nothing for iPhone users.
3. Universal Links (iOS) and App Links (Android)
These are worth setting up for your app anyway, because they let links open the installed app directly from Safari, Mail, Notes and so on.
Limits: they're for people who already have your app, and they're often not triggered from inside another app's in-app browser. They don't solve "get a new user to the store".
4. Platform detection and smart redirects
A small server-side script can check the user agent and send iPhone users to the App Store and Android users to Google Play, with a web page for desktop users. That's useful, because one link is easier to share than two.
Limits: you still have to handle the in-app browser case on top of it, keep it maintained, and add your own analytics if you want to know where clicks come from.
Put together, a reasonably robust DIY setup is: your own domain, a fast landing page, platform detection, in-app browser detection with a fallback prompt, Android intent handling, and click tracking. It's doable, but it's yet another thing to maintain alongside your actual app.
The one-link option
I ran into this with my own app's TikTok traffic, which is why I built PleaseOpen.me. You get one link that's built to escape TikTok and Instagram in-app browsers and send people to the right store: the App Store on iPhone and Google Play on Android. It fixes the "Action can't be completed" problem without you maintaining any of the above.
Each link also comes with:
- a simple landing page for your app
- free privacy policy and ads.txt hosting, which is handy if your app doesn't have a website yet
- click analytics by platform, device and country, so you can compare TikTok, Instagram and X, or give each creator their own tagged link
It has handled over 50,000 link visits so far, and there's a free plan if you want to try it on your own bio link.
Quick checklist
- [ ] Test your store link inside TikTok and Instagram, on iPhone and Android, with the app not installed
- [ ] Avoid long redirect chains in your bio link
- [ ] Use one link that detects the platform rather than two separate store links
- [ ] Handle the in-app browser case, either with a fallback prompt or a link that escapes it
- [ ] Track clicks per platform and channel so you notice when something breaks
- [ ] Re-test after major TikTok and Instagram updates
If your clicks look healthy but installs don't, the in-app browser is the first thing to check. Five minutes of testing on a real phone can save a lot of lost installs.
Have you found other in-app browser quirks with store links? Let me know in the comments, I'd like to hear what you've run into.
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