Meta doesn't document the instagram:// scheme on any developer page we could find. Instagram's own profile pages publish it anyway. The page head of instagram.com/instagram carries a tag called al:ios:url with the value instagram://user?username=instagram, the same shape the generator builds for your profile. For Android apps, that page gives an https address instead.
What each form does with an Instagram link
- The https link (
https://www.instagram.com/yourhandle/). Instagram lists its app in the files instagram.com publishes for Apple (apple-app-site-association) and Google (assetlinks.json). Those files are how an app claims its own web addresses, so the phone opens your profile in the app, or loads instagram.com when the app is missing. - The custom scheme (
instagram://user?username=yourhandle). It exists for profiles only, and it opens the app or nothing. The website fallback belongs to the https link: Apple's documentation says that when the app isn't installed, a universal link (Apple's name for an https link an app has claimed) opens in the default browser. - The Android intent. In Chrome on Android it opens Instagram, or the instagram.com address written into the link when the app is missing.
Posts and reels get no scheme
Paste a /p/ or /reel/ link and the generator builds the https link and the intent, but no scheme. The code in a post address, such as CxYzAbCdEfG, is a shortcode. Instagram's media scheme needs an internal numeric media ID, and nothing in the public link contains it. A /reels/ link comes back in the /reel/ form.
The in-app browser
This part is about links you put in your Instagram bio, whether they point at another Instagram profile or at a YouTube video or Spotify track. They're usually tapped inside Instagram's own in-app browser, not Safari or Chrome. Meta publishes nothing on how that browser treats a custom scheme, so the generator treats it as the least likely place for one to work. That is the main reason the https link is the one to put in your bio.
On the bio page itself, Raydar's own data points the other way. In our study of 4,668 link in bio clicks, visits that opened in an in-app browser included a click more often than visits in a standard browser: 44.89% against 18.21% on the full sample. We quote that as a direction only. What we couldn't see is whether the destination opened properly after the tap.
How to test it
- From a second account, open your profile inside Instagram and tap the bio link, on one phone with the destination app installed and one without.
- If a login, booking form or checkout breaks inside Instagram's browser, fix the destination page. No link format fixes that.
Facebook pages have the same problem as Instagram posts: the scheme needs a number your link doesn't carry, which the Facebook deep link page shows from Facebook's own page source. The deep link generator page covers the general case, and the TikTok page answers the same questions for TikTok.