option to disable Custom Tabs

[kylrth]

Custom Tabs is a feature in Android that allows app developers to keep you in their app when you open a link in the browser. Custom tabs are different from the WebView UI feature in that they call to the default browser to render the page. While some users might see this as convenient, many do not, for these two reasons:

• The visit is not stored in browser history.
• Any subsequent pages visited or interactions are observed by the app, which is a privacy concern.

Some apps provide a switch in settings to turn this feature off, but many don't. In addition to several people online (one, two, three), I've spoken with several people I know personally who each independently told me that they would like to be able to turn this feature off.

This idea was posted on the Bugzilla 3 months ago, with no activity since. It would be easy for someone familiar with the code to add this feature, and I'd be willing to put up a bounty with others if there were someone willing to add this.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Skaramuche]

This option used to exist, as of 2019- see the first answer here. I don't know why it was cut but it's vital

[dahamsta]

I wouldn't mind if the share button on the custom tabs actually worked.

[ruun]

This needs more kudos. Custom Tabs are cancer. Seeing that privacy oriented Mozilla allows this is shocking!

[teohhanhui]

Unfortunately, many apps also never test their integration with anything other than the default browser (usually Google Chrome nowadays). So when they use Custom Tabs to integrate Facebook login for example, it doesn't work unless I set the default browser to Google Chrome.

[alchemyheelsi]

Created an account just  to +1 this and leave this comment.

On the linked bugzilla tracker https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1812848 there was an update a few days ago that this is not on the roadmap due to unclear desire for the feature:

> If we can get a better sense on the frequency of compatibility issues, or the number of people that would be interested in this feature would help us prioritizing it.

Notably the original 2020 github feature request https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5513 has many +1 and thumbs up on many of the comments (and would have even more if the issue were not closed in the move to bugzilla, which closed the issue / froze voting).

Worth noting that many people will have difficulty even finding this thread since most users will not know the search term "android custom tab" or <browser> custom tab.

There is no reason to disallow users the option to multitask in android (custom tab prevents state toggle between the pre-click screen and the destination screen -- a problem that has been solved by browser tabs which were present in Mozilla since Phoenix 0.1's launch in 2002).