Preventing the YouTube app from opening from Safari

TidBITS Talk
1

I have the Youtube app on my iPad. When browsing with Safari any links to Youtube automatically open the Youtube app and play the video. These days this is unnecessary (and irritating!) because the videos happily play within Safari (HTML5).
I have searched the internet for tips to disable this “feature” but the only one that seems to work is to delete the Youtube app from my iPad.

There are numerous tips that refer to settings that don’t exist (click bait?).

Do any Tidbits readers have a solution?

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That’s strange. On my iPhone, Youtube links in Safari open in Safari, and I’m given a chance (via a popup) to switch to the app or not:

Screenshot
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I didn’t see any obvious setting for this in the YouTube app, YouTube settings or Safari settings, but I may have missed something. Check to make sure you don’t have any Safari extension enabled that might do this.

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I have looked at all the settings (safari, youtube, privacy/security…). This is happening with my iPad with OS 17.6.1 (but also earlier OS).
For now I think I will delete the Youtube app.

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I noticed this too in my iPhone 12 mini’s iOS v17.6.1. :(