Magnet Link Not Opening on iPhone? Fix It in Minutes
Updated May 2026
You tap a magnet link in Safari or Reddit, and nothing happens. No prompt, no app launch, no error. The cause is almost always one of six things. Run through them in order.
1. Confirm the link is actually a magnet link
Long-press the link to preview the URL. It should start with magnet:?. If it starts with https:// or anything else, the site is showing a magnet button that wraps a normal link, which iOS handles differently.
2. Open the page in Safari first
Reddit, Telegram, Twitter, and many other apps use in-app browsers that silently block custom URL schemes like magnet:. The fix is to open the same page in Safari, then tap the magnet link there. In Reddit, tap the share icon and pick Safari. In Telegram, tap the three dots and Open in Safari.
3. Reinstall Magnet Linker so iOS reassigns the handler
Sometimes the system loses the link between the magnet scheme and the handler app. Deleting Magnet Linker and reinstalling it forces iOS to register the handler from scratch. This fixes the majority of stubborn cases.
4. Reboot the device
iOS caches which app handles which URL scheme. A reboot clears that cache. After the reboot, try a known-good test link: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:1234567890abcdef.
5. Remove competing apps
If you previously installed another app that registers magnet:, iOS may still route links to that one. The behaviour is to give the scheme to the most recently installed handler. Either remove the other app or reinstall Magnet Linker last.
6. Use long-press, then Open
Some sites intercept taps with JavaScript and turn the magnet link into a regular click that the page handles internally. Long-press the link and choose Open from the menu. That bypasses the page script and lets iOS hand the URL to the registered handler.
Still nothing?
If you have tried all six and the link still does not open:
- Try the test link above. If that works but a real link does not, the link itself is malformed or the page is rewriting it.
- Copy the link manually with long-press, then paste it into a downloader page like put.io, premiumize.me, or seedr.
- Send a feedback report at magnetlinker.canny.io with the iOS version and the source app you tapped from.
