I have an app that relies on deep linking using a custom scheme ://appName for some user email verification. The way it currently works is:
User enters email in app and hits send
Email is sent to user, user taps on "activate" button
Button opens valid website url which then redirects to deep link url, i.e ://appName/auth/tokenId
All was good, and this worked flawlessly on iOS 9 devices, but iOS 10 seemed to break it.
After further investigation:
appName://id=123 opens in iOS9, but in iOS10 safari displays that “the url can’t be shown” for the exact same URL.
They will both work however for the URL scheme alone (appName://)
You can even test this on your devices/simulator to see. Perhaps the change is in safari?
More investigation:
Almost sure its related to Safari.
Any ideas on how to resolve this?
Eventually tracked down this issue and got a response from the CEO of Branch. He said:
Ah interesting find! I just tested a few ways and it seems to reject
typed-in URI schemes with a deep link host & path, but you can still
trigger them in JS and click them on page. You just can't type it in
for some reason.
So beware of this if you are using deep linking in such a way on iOS 10!
I personally ended up just giving the direct deep link URL in the email, rather than embedding a redirect in a nice button. Something like this appName://gotoHere/here
Related
I've found two options to open my app from a Safari web page: a custom URL scheme created in my app project's Info.plist or Apple's Universal Linking. Obviously the custom URL scheme is the easiest one to set up, but the problem I'm having with this is that Safari shows a confirmation window asking "Open myapp?" first and the user has to tap OK before the app actually opens. I want my app to open automatically as the scheme is opened, and I'm being told the only way to do this is through Universal Linking (please correct me if this is not true). If this is true, however, I would like to know if it's possible in any way to put the required apple-app-site-association file on a http:// domain instead of https://? According the official Apple documentation the format of a correct Universal Link starts explicitly with https:// but my domain name can't be loaded on https:// without redirecting a few times and that messes up the web services I've written to execute other tasks in my app. The two main questions I'm left with after this issue:
1) Is it really impossible to work around the confirmation prompt using a custom URL scheme (myscheme://)? If it's not impossible, how can I do this?
2) If I have to use Apple Universal Linking, can I use a http:// domain? If so, how do I do it? Right now if I load up the universal link, it just shows the dictionary inside the apple-app-site-association file, which I'm pretty sure is not supposed to happen. I'm told it's supposed to send a NSUserActivity object to my app delegate. How can I accomplish this with a http:// link?
It is not possible to trigger a custom URI scheme without showing an alert to the user. This used to be possible in iOS 8, but iOS 9 started showing the alert for all apps. And iOS 10.3 has extended that even to the App Store itself. You cannot bypass this. Universal Links were created to replace URI schemes for this behavior, so you do need to use them instead.
From your description, I believe you may be misunderstanding how Universal Links work. To answer the literal questions you asked first, no the Universal Link URL itself does not need to be on the https:// protocol, and yes, the apple-app-site-association must be served over https:// without redirects.
However, it sounds like you're trying to serve the content of the apple-app-site-association file for every Universal Link. That is not the correct implementation — the AASA file is hosted only at https://example.com/apple-app-site-association, and iOS automatically retrieves it when the app is installed. After that, any URL on example.com that matches the criteria in the AASA file will be eligible for Universal Links.
All of that said, you really don't want to built out this system on your own. I suggest looking into Firebase Dynamic Links or Branch.io (full disclosure: I'm on the Branch team).
Is it really impossible to work around the confirmation prompt using a custom URL scheme (myscheme://)? If it's not impossible, how can I do this?
That is possible with some hacky tricks and BAD user experience. It requires user to press "add to home screen" button, so I don't recommend this solution in most cases.
set your app scheme like myapp
create the following html file and put it into the web
window.onload = function() {
if (("standalone" in window.navigator) && window.navigator.standalone) {
window.location.href = 'myapp://open'
}
}
open the html file with safari and "add to home screen"
open the home screen icon and your native app will launch
The point is the meta tag.
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />
Without this, safari will launch and confirmation prompt will appear.
I'm integrating firebase in application. I created universal link that worked for Android & iOS both.
This worked great. BUT I got scenario where I clicked on goo.gl (PFA) link which was displaying on launched app right-top side. And from then no matter what I do, Deeplink will never launch my application.
I checked to clear history of device-browser but it's same. Any suggestion how to get rid of this issue/feature ??
You're absolutely right: the forward button is horrible UI/UX. It's one of the big flaws with Universal Links identified in this blog post. There is no way to disable the forward button, and once it's triggered, you're screwed.
The easiest way to re-enable Universal Linking behavior after it is turned off is to long-press on the link. Your best bet at getting a clean shot is to paste the Universal Link URL into the stock Notes app and try long-pressing it from there.
Long hold on the url and there will be option to open in app.
Usually when you click the "forward" link to open the universal link in Safari, you can re-open the app by dragging the page down. A bar will appear with your app name and an "OPEN" button. This works as long as you're still in the same URL.
Unfortunately, for Firebase Dynamic Links specifically, the link will redirect you to another domain (for example, from https://z99zz.app.goo.gl/zzzz to https://z99zz-c.app.goo.gl/zzzz) and this breaks this feature. The solution is to either add ?d=1 to the original link (https://z99zz.app.goo.gl/zzzz?d=1, opens a link debug page), or just remove everything after the domain (https://z99zz.app.goo.gl/, opens an error page). Now when it opens in Safari, you can drag down and see the bar.
In addition to imgx64 post. I had a similar problem: Firebase redirected to z99zz-c.app.goo.gl/zzzz and in this case system was not redirected to my app. I added "applinks:mzn3g-c.app.goo.gl" as Associated domain in my target capabilities and this does the trick! Even if you redirected to domain with "-c" suffix iOS can recognize it and will redirect to your app and show suggestion in Safari
I found a lot of tutorials about opening an app by a custom url scheme like:
myappname://
Thats nice but it would be great to open an app by registering the real app domain over the http link like
http://www.myappdomain.com/blablabla
So - for example - if a visitor comes to a webpage (on her/his mobile) it is normally opened in the browser, excepts the installed app is listening to the opened URL and opens itself instead of the browser.
How is this done (i've seen this at another app). Any help would be great. Thanks in advance!
It is a new feature in iOS9. It is explained in the WWDC15 talk Seamless linking to your App.
You could also add a small piece of javascript to each page that opens your custom URL-scheme.
My app uses a custom URL scheme so i send a link to my users in an email which when clicked, launches my app installed on their devices. This was working seamlessly till iOS 6 came into picture.
Now when the users click on the link or even type the address manually in the safari they get an error saying "Safari cannot open the page because it is a local file."
Wondering if anyone else encountered the same or if someone has any pointers in this regard !!
Any help much appreciated...
Update: it works if I only give my app's custom url without any parameters.. e.g. if I do "reader-app://" it launches my app but if i do "reader-app://doc=xyz" it doesn't !
try: reader-app://?doc=xyz (add a question mark after //) this way you'll specify a query string. It works for me, but it presents an alertdialog asking the user if she wants to open the url with my application
Try to remove the - sign from reader-app://.
My URL was not working until I removed underscore sings from URL.
Ex:
my_app:// is not working.
myapp:// is working.
That is just a guess.
The main task I'm trying to achieve is to open my app with a URL.
Adding the custom URL scheme to the appName-Info.plist everything works fine using the corresponding handleOpenUrl: etc etc.
My point is that my app has got a webSite as well. So what I'm trying to do is, given an url to my users (tiny, short url doesn't matter) combine together these 3 different cases:
If the user opens the URL from his iPhone and he's got the app installed: open the iPhone app;
If the user opens the URL from his iPhone and he hasn't got the app installed: open the iTunes store URL of the app;
If the user open the the URL from his phone (android, tablet, etc) , or from the web, show the web page instead.
My problem is that I can achieve all these tasks separately but I cannot combine all together.
Note: tried to add the http://myApp.com to the UrlScheme but of course didn't work coz the http:// is managed by Safari in the iPhone.
Any idea? Help and suggestions would be really appreciated. Tks a lot chaps.
This SO question seems to have the answer you're looking for:
Check if the user-agent is that of an iPhone/iPod Touch
Check for an appInstalled cookie
If the cookie exists and is set to true, set window.location to your-uri:// (or do the redirect server side)
If the cookie doesn't exist, open a "Did you know Your Site Name has an iPhone application?" modal with a "Yep, I've already got it", "Nope, but I'd love to try it", and "Leave me alone" button.
The "Yep" button sets the cookie to true and redirects to your-uri://
The "Nope" button redirects to "http://itunes.com/apps/yourappname" which will open the App Store on the device
The "Leave me alone" button sets the cookie to false and closes the modal
The other option I've played with but found a little clunky was to do the following in Javascript:
This would solve one of your problems, it will link the user to the app page:
itms-apps://itunes.com/apps/APPNAME