Mobile browsers see telephone numbers everywhere

10 points by EvanHahn

jak2k

I cannot reproduce this on Graphene OS with Vanadium (a Chromium soft-fork). Is this an Apple thing again?

mtlynch

Yeah, I think it's just an iOS thing:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariHTMLRef/Articles/MetaTags.html

I can't find any other documentation for it on MDN, though apparently there used to be a similar IE-specific feature called x-ms-format-detection.
- olliej
  
  Comment removed by author
donio

Mastodon thread

The author confirms there that it's platform specific, not all mobile browsers.
olliej

I don’t see it on iOS either? Maybe older versions? (Remember early on in the “having a real browser on a phone” the overwhelming majority of phone numbers had to be auto detected)
- zie
  
  I can't see it on iOS 26 under Safari , Orion or Firefox either.
sethmlarson

You're right, this is apparently an iOS-specific behavior. I've updated the post and added a "WebKit mode" toggle so anyone can experience what iOS does.

forestj

Firefox on lineageOS users not affected.

duncan_bayne

Yup. Not one of the numbers behaved like a tel link for me.

willhbr

I don't get any links on iOS in Safari, maybe this is region-specific or something (ie not highlighting numbers that are only valid in the US when I'm in Australia)