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Make article link preview default on iOS article view taps
Open, MediumPublic3 Estimated Story Points

Assigned To
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Authored By
HNordeenWMF
Jun 30 2025, 11:14 PM
Referenced Files
F62753101: IMG_50B80A743BA4-1.jpeg
Jun 30 2025, 11:17 PM
F62753095: File (7).jpg
Jun 30 2025, 11:17 PM
F62753051: Screenshot_20250626-130536.png
Jun 30 2025, 11:14 PM
F62753076: image.png
Jun 30 2025, 11:14 PM
F62753061: image.png
Jun 30 2025, 11:14 PM

Description

Background

We’ve heard positive things about the article link previews on Android. We hypothesize that if show iOS's existing article previews as the default behavior on single tap (instead of only accessible through long-press), more people will see them & use them.

This is preparation for the larger deployment of Tabs V2 (T396055), where the tabs options will be in the article preview context menu. If article previews are default, more people will also see the option to open articles in new tabs, increasing Tabs discovery and usage significantly.

Playstore reviews

  • …Nice small previews before opening a page
  • …article previews which make browsing easier…
  • …I mostly love the link previews…

AppStore Connect

  • I’m coming to iPhone from android. The Wikipedia app on Android has tabs, as well as a preview bottom sheet when you tap on a link in text. This are awesome features that I miss on iPhone.
  • I love Wikipedia and laud it as my most used app of all time, but I cannot support this variant of it until the capability of utilizing tabs and article previews is instated on iOS. Until then, it is, sorrowfully, limited and borderline useless.
  • The lack tabs and previews/summaries of articles when you click on inline links are the my two main gripes.

Reddit

  • I loved how the android app, if you clicked on something in an article, a little preview would pop up - and that was often enough for me to get the gist of something without needing to open the whole page up.
Requirements
  • Within article view only, show the article preview screen after single tap (Instead of immediately going to article in the current tab)
  • Longpress in article view remains the same
  • Make this change for all users, including those in the Tabs A/B test
  • Add a setting in Reading preferences that allows people to turn link previews off (this should default to on)
Reference
iOS Article link preview without TabsiOS Article link preview with TabsSettings > Reading preferencesAndroid link preview
File (7).jpg (1,179×2,556 px, 184 KB)
IMG_50B80A743BA4-1.jpeg (1,179×2,556 px, 1 MB)
image.png (720×1,560 px, 192 KB)
Screenshot_20250626-130536.png (1,080×2,400 px, 593 KB)

Event Timeline

Blocked on finding a solution, will move this here until I can get some feedback from other engineers

At this moment, we decided not to move forward with this ticket as it wasn't going to be as straightforward as we initially thought.
We currently add the custom preview and context menu actions through WKWebView delegate method func webView(_ webView: , contextMenuConfigurationForElement elementInfo: , completionHandler:) - it adds the context menu and preview to the element that was long pressed, without the need to add any additional gesture recognition.
There's no native way to add a preview and context menu to short taps. We can add other actions in our handleLinks() method in ArticleViewController. We could build an overlay view mimicking the preview + menu behaviour, but it'd have to be a custom element.

Mazevedo subscribed.