Ferdi: Open Telegram tg:// link in default browser

[MatthieuTinnes]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Sometimes i open links in Ferdi and I can't copy them to clipboard, so I'm stuck with "ferdi embedded browser"

Describe the solution you'd like
I would the option to choose in the settings : Open links with ferdi browser OR with default browser.

If this feature request is approved, I can maybe try to dev it.

[Gaboris]

Odd because both Ferdi AND Franz does that since day one by default.

The open in internal browser seems more of a bug in some systems or something.

Heck, I'd be more interested in the option to set what browser to use and not default to the system default. :thinking:
It's already a request on Franz's Github that I also supported.

[MatthieuTinnes]

Ok, after some testing, it appear that this behaviour appear only in Telegram. In FB messenger and steam chat it open my default browser (Firefox) correctly. I've only tested this 3 services.

Opening a link in Telegram :

[Gaboris]

Still seems to be a local problem since both Telegram and Messenger opens up my Firefox browser even if it's turned off. Messenger sometimes needs to be clicked twice, but still.

I'll admit that a lot of people have this problem. It involves all kinds of other messages, pages or functions, but it's actually not intended to be like that and the problem is that somehow the devs would need to reproduce this in order to figure out how to solve it. What system are you using with what settings involving Ferdi?

Where is Ferdi installed? Maybe it's not on the system drive just as a quick guess?

[MatthieuTinnes]

Windows 10, Ferdi 5.4.3 installed in system drive (AppData)
But after some digging, I've spotted the issue :
<a href="tg://unsafe_url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fitch.io%2Fs%2F28060%2Fits-free" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[link]</a>
Telegram link use "Telegram protocol" for external link. If I edit and delete tg://unsafe_url?url=, it opens correctly in my browser.
And the reason why it's the same behaviour for everyone, it's maybe juste because "tg://" is not handled the same depending on the configuration.

[Gaboris]

That might be a good point to start at, but also curious where did you get that snippet from? Ferdi uses webview to display its content so you shouldn't be able to see the elements. Or did you get that from an actual browser?

[MatthieuTinnes]

With ctrl + alt + i, you can open the chromium debug tools, like in any electron app

[Gaboris]

Yes and for me it shows that the service is running enclosed within a webview element and I actually can't see the contents.

Maybe THAT is the reason. Maybe your client isn't actually the "real" Ferdi process, but maybe it's running within Ferdi's internal browser like the option to run custom webpages and THAT is why your default browser gets ignored. Because it's ALREADY within a browser. :thinking:

[vantezzen]

Ferdi implements logic to test if it should open a link you clicked in the browser or on Ferdi:
https://github.com/getferdi/ferdi/blob/f07b3f706d29959e22b652620a466a5af30b892a/src/webview/recipe.js#L272-275

We probably need to refine this test to make sure it works with this.

[Gaboris]

Cool, that might be the case then, but I'm curious why haven't I ever seen this behavior and how Matt able to see the code for the client?
Was my guess about it somehow being opened in the internal browser right or is there something I'm still not getting right?

[kytwb]

@Gaboris To open Telegram's developer tools: Toggle Service Developer

Otherwise we have merged a pull request addressing right clicks and context menu. The right click on links in Telegram now looks like this:

[MatthieuTinnes]

Thanks, this solution looks perfect for me !
I'm closing the issue