Opener Turns Two
Two years ago today I launched Opener for iOS, and since then I’ve been steadily advancing and improving it. I’m incredibly proud of this app, and it’s been fun to watch it grow.
There’s a small update to Opener out today that enhances its 3D Touch support, allowing you to peek at web content.
You can also peek at the apps that Opener supports and leave feedback right from a home screen shortcut.
Opener 1.3.5 will be on sale through Friday to celebrate its birthday.
I wanted to take some time today to reflect back on its usage and adoption. In total since its launch over 349,500 links have been opened in Opener, an average of 479 per day.
YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter apps all dominate the most opened apps from Opener with ProTube and Instagram at the top. Browser support was added to Opener in early 2016, and Safari is the big winner here with Chrome and Puffin trailing behind. As far as integrations with other apps go, Opener is very popular with users of a Japanese Twitter client named Feather, followed by Workflow and other popular launcher apps.
When Opener launched in 2015 it supported just 41 apps, but over the years it has come to support almost 200 apps and 24 browsers. Many of these including popular ones like ProTube, narwhal, and V for Wikipedia were suggested by my users. It’s been awesome getting so much feedback about what people want from the app.
88% of the links opened with Opener are through its action extension, which is a testament to Apple’s app extensibility system. Without app extensions Opener would make far less sense as a product. Opener still supports back to iOS 8, the first version with extensions, and I see no reason to change that any time soon. 84% of links opened were opened on iPhones instead of iPads.
The purpose for this app hasn’t changed since day 1: developers spend countless hours building terrific apps, but when tapping a majority of links on iOS devices users are just directed to the web where they’re likely not authenticated and won’t have a nice, native experience. I wanted to fill the gap and direct people to the best possible place they could go to view the content they’re trying to see. Even with the advent of universal links I still believe Opener is incredibly useful, and people seem to like it.
I plan to continue developing Opener. I’m hoping to spend some time building in even better link previewing in the future, and app, browser, and feature suggestions are always welcome!
Happy opening!
Infographics by Leslie Canoy
