On things like imessage and notes, the non-www website isn’t being recognized as a link. If I do www.example.com it works, but not example.com. If I do something like https://example.com without WWW it does work.
What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?
I have tried making a DNS record to connect the root to the www-website. I have tried things like type A and AAAA where I do @ for the root and then put the IP address for the content. I’ve also tried doing a direct rule for root to WWW and that didn’t work, and I’ve tried doing another DNS record of CNAME with the root and the www website as the content. Nothing seems to be working.
Your apex domain doesn’t have any DNS records. Since you say you tried adding them, can you post a screenshot of your DNS settings from the Cloudflare dashboard, so we can see what may be wrong?
For a Pages project, you don’t create your own DNS records. Add both versions of the name (with and without www) as custom domains to the Pages project, and the DNS is taken care of for you.
I think many don’t. All they’re doing is saying “this looks like a link, let’s make it one”, so they usually have a short hard-coded list of extensions they look for. Just add the https:// to be sure.