Very simple, from the source:
Lemmy Universal Link Switcher, or LULs for short, scans all links on all websites, and if any link points to a Lemmy instance that is not your main/home instance, it rewrites the link so that it instead points to your main instance.
In essence, any Lemmy link you come across is automatically redirected to your home instance. It’s also easy to customise, you can add/remove instances and prevent it from working on particular sites (or force it to only work on sites you wish).
Can be installed with Tampermonkey or ViolentMonkey (or similar tools).
note: this may also work just fine on mobile browsers that support extensions (and would likely help direct your browser to opening your lemmy app - if you have one - more often), but I haven’t tested this.
Out of curiosity, how many browse on desktop?
I’ve been using Lemmy since the API exodus and only ever substantially used wefwef/Voyager the whole time. Even on desktop I use the PWA for Voyager.
It would be cool if something like this could also be incorporated into the apps because it sucks when someone puts a link that doesn’t correctly use your instance to see the post they’re sharing, instead opening a browser to display the post.
I am on desktop pretty much exclusively.
I assume just via the normal desktop site? I tried that back when I very first started with Lemmy but I quickly switched to using the Voyager web app just because I like the app features and especially the post layout. I might have to give the default web interface another shot as I only tried way back when I first switched over.
Whoops guess I should’ve specified, I use the Alexandrite UI instead of the default
Default lemmy ui is atrocious (in my oh-so-humble opinion), though some people do like it.
I’d recommend Photon or Alexandrite
I use Alexandrite. It’s the closest to Sync / Thunder I’ve tried.
I wasn’t the biggest fan, thanks for the recommendations. I’ll give em a shot.
Lots of instances host these alongside the default ui. If they have it theres usually a link in the sidebar or try adding a subdomain ‘p’.
100% of the time I’m using an app, just like I did on reddit. Don’t even know what the desktop site looks like (jk)
100% of the time I’m using an app, just like I did on reddit. Don’t even know what the desktop site looks like (no jk)
I only visit the site via desktop.
I use this on the Android Firefox browser :D didn’t like the apps at the time I made this, that’s why I made sure that it’s compatible with mobile Firefox as well.
I’ll browse here and there in browser on my laptop but 90+% of the time I’m using voyager
I’m on desktop 80% of the time and use Alexandrite for its 2-column layout.
What does Voyager do if you click on a link to another instance? Open in the browser?
Thunder tries to resolve the link to your local instance and opens it directly in the app.
Voyager opens it in voyager on your home instance. It’s really nice
Nice, that’s what I would expect! Lemmy has an endpoint that makes it easy to resolve links across instances. The OP implied Voyager didn’t do that.
https://join-lemmy.org/lemmy-js-client-docs/v0.19/interfaces/ResolveObject.html
I use Voyager on mobile most of the time, but still do a little browsing on my desktop using Photon.
I do a lot of browsing on desktop, especially when comments need a lot of research. I use mobile a lot as well.