How to create a Shopify app that opens an external webpage in a new tab?

Topic summary

A developer is attempting to build a Shopify app that opens an external webpage in a new tab when clicked from the admin’s left navigation or apps dropdown. The main challenge is that embedded apps run inside iframes, causing browsers to block automatic popup windows.

Current Limitations:

  • The external page can load within the iframe, but this doesn’t provide the desired user experience
  • Standard popup methods are blocked by browser security

Desired Solution:
The developer references the Gelato app as a working example that successfully opens external pages in new tabs. Gelato’s app displays a link icon in the apps dropdown, suggesting it may use a different app configuration than standard embedded apps.

Key Question:
What type of Shopify app architecture or settings are needed to replicate Gelato’s functionality and bypass the iframe popup restrictions?

The discussion remains open with another developer reporting the same issue, indicating no solution has been found yet.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

I am trying to create a Shopify app that can be used by the admins of stores that have the app installed. I am trying to open a web page on our external site on a new tab and pass some query parameters to it when you click on the app name pinned on the left navigation bar under Apps or clicking the app name from the apps dropdown.

The issue I am currently facing that since the embedded apps are rendered inside an iframe, we cannot automatically open a new tab for displaying the external web page since the browser will block popups. I am able to load the external web page in the iframe but that is not the experience we are looking for.

I looked at a couple of Shopify apps that use this flow. The Gelato Shopify App uses this flow as we checked. Does anybody know how they do it? The Gelato app has an icon indicating that it is a link in the apps dropdown. Ours is an embedded app currently. What type of Shopify app do our app needs to be to appear and have the functionality of the Gelato App?

Has there been any new info about this issue? I am facing it too