How it works
LinkTools is a small, private, frontend-only utility. Here's exactly what happens when you open a link.
Paste your link
Copy any link from anywhere — Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Spotify, Swiggy, or any other URL. Paste it into the input on the homepage.
We detect the service
Our client-side detector checks the URL's hostname against a list of 60+ known services. This runs entirely in your browser — no network request is made to identify the service.
We try the native app
If a supported service is detected, we construct the correct deep-link URI (e.g. instagram://, spotify://, whatsapp://) and attempt to open it. The browser then prompts the native app to handle it.
Automatic browser fallback
We can't know for certain if the app was installed. After a 2.5-second window, if the page is still visible, we automatically navigate to the original URL in the browser — preserving every character of the original link.
Nothing is stored
The URL you paste lives only in your browser's memory for the duration of that one action. It is never sent to any server we control, never saved to localStorage, and never tracked.
Why can't we confirm the app opened?
Browsers intentionally don't expose whether a deep link was handled by a native app. This is a security feature — it prevents websites from fingerprinting which apps you have installed. Because of this, LinkTools never claims “App opened successfully”; it only tells you it's trying.