I understand that, what I was getting at is more that I, as a user, have little insight or control around when or where my phone will decide to open an app when I click a link, vs continue to work like a normal browser. The app developers declare their associations and url patterns and that's it.
I agree, it’s pretty obnoxious… But there is the same problem on Android, app handlers for verified domains cannot be disabled there, only the handlers for unverified domains (which are unticked by default, so opt-in).