Get Started
Back to Guides
Create Your First Magic Link

Create Your First Magic Link

Build a Magic Link that opens the native app when installed and a real browser when it isn't—without hand-crafting deep links for every campaign.

setupmagic linksdeep linking
October 26, 2026

A Magic Link is one short URL that routes smartly: if the destination's native app is installed on the visitor's phone, the link opens there. If it isn't, the link opens in a real browser—Safari or Chrome—not an in-app WebView.

This guide walks you through creating your first one.

When you'd want a Magic Link

  • You're linking to a YouTube video from an Instagram story and want app installs to open YouTube directly.
  • You're linking to an Amazon product and want the price tag, reviews and 1-click buy to show up in-app.
  • You're linking to your Shopify store from a TikTok bio and want checkout to run in Safari with cookies intact.

Normal links fail the first two cases (they open in Instagram's WebView). Hand-crafted deep links fail the third (they only work when the app is installed). Magic Links handle all three with the same URL.

Step 1 — Sign in to Flare

Open the Flare dashboard. If you don't have an account yet, you can sign in with Google or email—auth runs through Clerk, so there's no password to manage.

Your account is a webMerchant record, separate from Shopify-connected Merchant accounts. Analytics live in webGeostats and redirectEvents.

Step 2 — Create the link

From the dashboard, click Create Magic Link.

Fill in:

  • Destination URL: the final page you want visitors to land on, e.g. https://youtube.com/watch?v=abc123 or https://amazon.com/dp/B0XXXXXX.
  • Label (optional): an internal name so you can find it later, e.g. "October IG story — launch video".

Click Create. You'll get back a short URL like https://flr.to/ab12cd.

Step 3 — Use it in a campaign

Drop the short URL anywhere a normal link goes: Instagram bio, TikTok bio, email, SMS, QR code, ad copy. Flare handles the routing at tap time, so you don't need to maintain app-specific variants.

If you need to measure a specific campaign, append your own UTM parameters:

https://flr.to/ab12cd?utm_source=instagram&utm_campaign=october-launch

Flare forwards every query parameter through to the destination, so your analytics tool sees the same UTMs it would if the visitor had clicked a plain link.

Step 4 — Watch where taps go

Back in the Flare dashboard, open the link's detail view. You'll see:

  • Total taps.
  • Breakdown by platform (iOS, Android, desktop).
  • Breakdown by source (in-app WebView vs. real browser).
  • Geo distribution.

That's the raw signal for whether the campaign is working. If 90% of taps come from Instagram's WebView and your checkout rate on that cohort is a tenth of your Google traffic, that's the gap Flare is closing.

What's different about this vs. a deep-link tool

Classic deep-linking tools make you generate a different URL per destination app and per campaign. You end up with a spreadsheet of 40 URLs and a sync problem when something changes.

Magic Links are one link, dynamic routing. The decision of "app or browser" happens at tap time based on what's actually installed—so you ship the campaign once and the link keeps working for everyone.

Next