How To Stop Youtube App From Automatically Opening On iPhone

If links on your iPhone are opening in the YouTube app by default, there are two ways to prevent this.

Do links on your iPhone automatically open in the YouTube app? If you don’t like the YouTube app for whatever reason, you might be wondering whether there’s a way to stop these links from opening in YouTube. Perhaps you’d prefer them to open in Safari instead, for example. In this guide, I will show you how to stop those links from auto-opening in the YouTube app.

Open a Specific YouTube Link in Safari (One-Off)

A one-off solution is to open the link in a new tab in Safari or another browser instead of on YouTube. To do that, you will have to long-press on the link until a menu pops up. Then, choose “Open in Safari” to open it in Safari.

If you are already using a browser such as Safari or Chrome, you might have to click on “Open in a New Tab” instead to open the link in a new tab instead of YouTube.

Deleting YouTube Altogether

How To Stop Youtube App From Automatically Opening On iPhone 3 — Deleting YouTube Altogether

Deleting the YouTube app will cause links to be opened in your browser instead.

Another option is deleting the YouTube app from your iPhone entirely. This will prevent links from being opened in YouTube in the future. On the other hand, this will also prevent you from using the YouTube app, so it might not be an ideal solution.

To delete YouTube, find the YouTube app on your home screen. Long-press on it and click on Remove App and then on Delete App.

What Doesn’t Control This (And Why)

Unfortunately, those are the only two consistent fixes. Changing your default browser won’t prevent Safari from opening a video in the YouTube app. If your iPhone detects that you are clicking on a YouTube link, and you have the YouTube app installed, it will default to the YouTube app.

Selecting the desktop version of YouTube or other sites you visit also won’t fix this. If you click on a YouTube link, it will usually still open in YouTube, unless you select the option to open it in a new tab, as explained above.

On Android phones, you can go to your settings and prevent YouTube links from being opened in the app by default. This setting is not available on iOS.

One option that may work is using Guided Access, which will lock you to Safari and prevent other apps from opening. However, it is quite an inconvenient solution, and it’s usually used to provide a safe experience to kids, so I don’t recommend it. You can read more about using Guided Access to lock your phone to one app here.

How to Revert if You Change Your Mind

How To Stop Youtube App From Automatically Opening On iPhone 5 — How to Revert if You Change Your Mind

You can always reinstall the YouTube app after deleting it.

If you deleted YouTube, you can always install it again by going to the App Store, searching for YouTube, and re-installing it. This will cause links to be opened in YouTube once more by default.

Conclusion

I hope this guide was useful! Unfortunately, there is no good way to prevent links from being opened in the YouTube app across the board other than deleting the YouTube app altogether. Your other option is to long-press on each link and select the option to open it in Safari or another browser, but you’ll need to do that each time you click on a link.