Not strictly related to the current thread but I used apps (now uninstalled for that specific reason) that insisted on trying to open Chrome's Custom Tabs and just crashed if that wasn't possible; never found a way to redirect those that didn't require rooting.
LinkSheet [1] can do that. It's a small app that you set as the default browser and shows a prompt when you open a link to allow you to choose what to do (eg. open in browser, open in app, share link, remove tracking URL parameters, etc.).
If you don't care about any of the extra functionality, you can configure it to always open your preferred browser and convert Custom Tabs intents to regular ones. No root access required.
