We have an app that is meant to be invoked from the Safari via URL Scheme. Since the iOS 9 update we keep getting a "Open this page in appname?" dialog. Previous the update, the app would simply open from the Safari without any kind of dialog.
Is there any reason this is happening now and any way to avoid it?
To avoid the alert, you need to avoid print a page (html) between the tap of the user and the store, if you use a link to your servers and then a 302 should work. But if you need to do this from javascript there is no way no avoid the alert opening, Apple did this to prevent those spammy banner that with javascript opens the store. If you still need to use html+javascript before the store redirect there is a way force the app store to open and it's overwriting the location of the page, the alert will appear anyway during the transition. Try something like this
window.location = {deep-link};
setTimeout( function() {
window.location = {dummy-page}; // the faster the better
},10);
The bad news my friend about this workaround, is that it works in iphone 6 but not in <=5
Related
I have a very specific issue with the wkwebview. When a user opts to use the Settings / Screen Time / Content Restrictions / web content / Allowed Websites Only then the user will be presented with a Native ui component which says Restricted Site and gives the user an option to allow the website via a Allow website button. The problem is that the website exception is indeed added to allowed list in setting but the following action of the button is blocked.
[Process] 0x10781e618 - [pageProxyID=8, webPageID=9, PID=6619] WebPageProxy::Ignoring request to load this main resource because it was handled by content filter
That means the user is stuck on the screen, which of cause is not ideal. To solve this we added an alert with the option to return to the login page (better messaging is required).
I have tried all WKNavigationDelegate and WKUIDelegate hooks which are not trigger upon clicking on the Allow Website button and I could not find any documentation around that feature. I guess the only way is to educate the user by showing a dialog with instruction to add a bunch of urls to the allowed sites section of screen time and then restart the app or reload the webview via the dialog. The whole process seems very clunky.
If anyone has some more information about this it would highly appreciated.
UPDATE:
Turns out that screen time has 2 ways of dealing with restricted content. With or without a passcode. If a passcode is set upon clicking the allow website button you will open a enter passcode dialog, which will reload the webview when entered correctly. If you don't have a passcode set the webview will not reload. In my answer below I was using a javascript to reload the webview after the html button was clicked (the shown view is not native but a local html file.) The problem with that approach is that it will crash the the app if a passcode is set.
I was hoping to find a way to know if the passcode screen has been presented but I was not successful yet. If I had that information then I could stop the webview from reloading and therefor stop the crash.
I have been learning more about this, and as it turns out the screen which shows the Restricted Site message isn't a native component but rather a system html file which gets loaded into the webview.
file:///System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/WebCore.framework/ContentFilterBlockedPage.html
The Allow website link contains a href of x-apple-content-filter://unblock which when clicked will add the blocked site to the allowed websites list (it seems to be handled outside of the WKNavigationDelegate scope). In order to refresh the webview, you need to inject a small javascript which reloads the page after you clicked the link.
(function(){
const element = document.querySelector('#unblock a');
console.log("####unblock####");
console.log("ELEMENTS", element);
if (element) {
element.onclick = function() {
setTimeout(() => {
console.log("called message handler")
callMessageHandler("reloadWebView")
}, 1000);
};
}
})();
You can use the userscript messageHandler functionality to reload the url, my example is incomplete but its not hard to work this out.
I hope this helps someone.
The "start_url" works for Android browsers, but for iPhone, Safari always uses current page's URL and ignores the "start_url".
For example, the current page is https://test.com/index.html, on manifest the "start_url" is set to be "start_url": "index.html?flag=1", but when the page is added to home screen on Safari, it still uses https://test.com/index.html, without the parameter.
Is there a way to apply a different URL as the start up URL for Safari?
A hacky solution I've implemented here is to silently change the URL on the page you prompt the user to install the PWA with: history.pushState({}, "", "/"); (see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/56691294/827129)
This will update the URL but won't cause the page to reload or refresh the DOM, so you can see the page you're on as normal, but when the user goes to install the PWA (Add to home screen) it'll save the root URL, so that's what they'll see when they open the PWA.
Downsides here include:
the URL in the address bar will update (not a big deal on mobile)
if the user presses the back button they'll go "back" to the page you triggered the history.pushState() on, so they'll need to press back twice to actually go back
if the user refreshes the page they'll see the homepage
In my use case this is good enough, there might be extra solutions to handle these issues that could be applied on top of this solution to improve UX.
try this url format
"start_url": "./index.html?flag=1"
We have an ad partner that is redirecting users to the app store after an ad in our app is tapped. We load an in-app browser which does the redirect. Nothing in the browser ever loads, it is just a white screen. Once the user returns to our app they are looking at that empty browser. Is there anyway to dismiss or close that browser once the redirect is completed?
We don't have any control over the server side.
What kind of in-app browser you are using in your app? Like a library or an UIWebView? If it's an UIWebView, there's a callback method when the webpage is loaded (and probably, redirected the link):
- (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView;
If you're using a library, I'm pretty sure it also has a method like that.
I fixed this by skipping the in-app browser and used Safari instead. App store re-directs are happening without showing the browser window and all the other ads are working as expected.
Plus I got to delete a bunch of old code.
We have an App that accepts donations and per Apple's guidelines (item 21.2) we can't do this in-app, it must open a webpage in Safari to perform the donation. We've got that bit working fine, and we can actually automatically invoke the App post donation and put the user right back where they left off. The trouble is that the Tab in Safari persists when the user returns to Safari later.
Is there a way to open an app from a webpage while simultaneously closing said webpage in Safari?
So apparently the way to do it is via Javascript. You can set the window location and then immediately close the window.
e.g.
window.location = "myapp://?stuff";
window.close;
The situation is like this:
User opens app from a website using a custom urlscheme
User does stuff in the app
User clicks button in the app to return to the website in Safari.
I have tried opening a new tab containing a javascript:window.close() but this does not work on iOS 6.1.
So my question is: Is there a way to open Safari to view the website the user left from? Either with a working new tab that closes itself or a different route?
When you open the app with your custom url scheme, pass the actual page url as an argument.
mycustomUrlScheme://mydomain.com?objectid=1234&callback_url=encoded_url
In your app, handle the url for the content info and keep the page url to open it afterwards. It will make safari open a new tab. But that should be a good start.
As far as i understand you can do it.
user opens mobile safari for example http://www.example.com
user clicks a link that is appscheme://open and the application become active
user taps a button to open safari for example http://www.example.com?q=test
for the third step you can use [[UIApplication sharedApplication]openURL:url]