Glide Pages + Facebook Android: stuck in FB in-app browser

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1

Hello Glide team & community,

I’m facing a serious UX issue with Glide Pages when users come from Facebook on Android.

Problem:
When a user clicks a direct link like
https://nasilje.glide.page/
inside the Facebook Android app, Facebook wraps it into
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?...
and opens it only inside Facebook’s in-app WebView.

As a result:

  • The Glide Page does not open in Chrome

  • The user never reaches the “real” app context

  • No deep-linking / PWA handoff happens

  • Many users (especially non-technical) abandon immediately

Even though the URL is correct, from the user’s perspective “the app never opens”.

Questions:

  1. Is there any official or recommended Glide workaround for Facebook/Instagram WebView on Android?

  2. Is there a reliable way to force or strongly encourage opening in an external browser (Chrome) from a Glide Page?

  3. Does Glide have a documented method to detect Meta WebView (Facebook / Instagram user agents) to show a dedicated “open in browser” gate screen?

  4. Is there any difference in behavior between Glide App vs Glide Page in this scenario?

  5. Are there known limitations acknowledged by Glide regarding Meta platforms?

I understand Facebook controls their WebView — I’m not looking for miracles — but I’d like to know what Glide officially recommends as best practice, and what is simply impossible by design.

Thanks in advance for any concrete guidance or references.

2

No difference between Glide App/Glide Pages. That distinction is not related to the issue you’re having. Back in 2021 or so, I was experiencing same issue on one of the first iterations of Glide Apps (before pages existed).

I’m not sure what Glide’s official recommendation is, but here’s what I do for quick fix (I think you can use specific link sharing tools to bypass FB in-app browser):

Instead of sharing a Glide link on FB, I just share an image with my custom domain & catchy instructions to open your browser & Go to “customdomain.app” to get started!