Links, Hanging Apps: A rundown of solutions

Over the past few days, several solutions have been offered to solve or partially mitigate this issue. I am suffering from this issue greatly on my iPhone, yet my iPad seems to be unaffected.

Many blame the Booking.com App for iOS and how it made of use of Apple's linking service.

Some reports state that Booking.com used a large file that contains any URLs that are supposed to open in the App rather than in a browser. This file overwhelmed the Active Link service from Apple and is causing this issue as it hangs the service and does not allow Safari to either pass the link on the the App nor open it itself. While the Booking.com App may have something to do with it, I have it installed on my iPad Pro, and it is unaffected by this issue, and my iPhone 6 that has now been restored, and the App in question removed prior to the restore continues to be affected. so not entirely convinced this is the culprit.

So here's a rundown of the solutions proposed That I have encountered so far, from the simplest to the most convoluted,

1. Reset the iPhone.

This one is the easiest, just hold down on the home and power / sleep buttons at the same time for 10 to 15 seconds or until the Apple logo appears on screen. Let the iPad or iPhone reboot and test. Some have reported success with this. It did nothing for me.

2. Turn off Javascript.

Go into Settings->Safari->Advanced->Javascript and turn it off. This has in fact worked for me, However, it renders many sites quite useless and you end up having to go back and turn it on, refresh the site, and then off every time you need to tap on an other link. It gets tiring very fast. But it does work in Safari, but does nothing for other apps such as the Mail App.

3. Use a different browser. Chrome will let you open the link if you hold it down, and tap on "Open in a new Tab". This again does very little for other apps like the Mail App however. Also the Opera browser does in fact work directly. Links work fine with no workarounds required.

4. Remove the Booking.com App or other similar Apps (and wait an hour). This has not worked for me at all. The app is no longer installed on the iPhone, and it still has the issue, while at the same time the App is installed on the iPad, and it does not have any issues.

5. Restore the iPhone. or iPad. I have also done this through iTunes, and the issue still presents itself. I did restore from a backup made prior to restoring, so the issue may be put back in place form the backup. But I simply cannot afford to not have all my data back in place.

6. Restore to factory condition without a backup. Several report success with this issue. But I have not tried it as I require my data for work. So cannot really start from scratch,

7. The most convoluted one so far:

https://infinitediaries.net/how-to-fix-ios-9-x-safarimail-link-bug/

Lots of steps, and if you miss one or change one it may not work. Have not gotten around to this one yet because of its many steps and time involved.

For now all we can do is wait for Apple to issue a fix it would seem. I hope this is useful to those suffering from this.