Deep linking is turned off for our app
But when ios users click a link we posted on our facebook page to our page app (https://apps.facebook.com/nakedwines/), they are redirected to the ios app instead of our competition page.
If an ios user enters the link manually into their browser, this works.
Is this a bug or is there something not set up right?
Your issue is that when mobile users try to access your app they're brought to the app store (when the app isn't installed) ? That's expected, if the app was installed it would be opened directly.
If you don't have an IOS app, remove the IOS details from the app settings and they'll be brought to your mobile web URL instead.
The Deep linking setting allows users who click posts from your app to be brought into the app with sufficient context to allow your app to display a specific piece of content.
i.e links to your app's content are passed through to the native app with the full URL, and your app can open that content directly.
For example, clicking a link to a spotify song on iOS opens the spotify app and plays that song, without deep linking it just opens spotify with no context.
I ended up creating a completely new facebook app for the competition page. This got round all of the issues. Facebook doesn't seem to play well if you have both a page app and ios/android apps under the same application.
Related
From Apple's guide in Support Universal Links:
When you support universal links, iOS 9 users can tap a link to your website and get seamlessly redirected to your installed app without going through Safari. If your app isn’t installed, tapping a link to your website opens your website in Safari.
But i'm confused that if my app is not installed,and I tap a universal link of my app in another app's UIWebView,will the system launch Safari app to load my website,or still load it in the UIWebView?
I test some app's universal links when the app is not installed,and they never launch Safari to load the next page ,they still load it in the UIWebView.
I want to konw if it's possible to launch Safari,but not stay in UIWebView.Do I need any configuration in apple-app-site-association file?
Actually I want to trace where my app was installed from by using cookie.I can store a cookie in Safari with informations of the download page,and get the cookie with SFSafariViewController when my app is installed and opened,and present different views according to the cookie.
What you are trying to build is called 'deferred deep linking'. This (plus a lot more) is exactly what we provide at Branch.io. If you want to avoid the headache of configuring it all yourself, give this a look. Apps like Pinterest, Airbnb, and Tinder all use us for this reason.
Apple's documentation is referring to the default behavior with the standalone Safari browser. Handling links inside an app with UIWebView supersedes this, and there is no way to automatically bounce out of the origin app into the main Safari app.
The workaround is to store data on your own backend. As you've discovered, relying on a cookie pass-through on the device itself won't work in many cases.
Deeplinks working perfectly when using chrome iOS app. But in safari it stopped working and it always redirect to the appstore page even the app is installed or sometimes pop a alert saying "safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid". Everything works perfect few days back. so my guess is this happens after the ios 9.2 update. Any solution for this?
UPDATE
I have tried using a new phone(Which app not installed before) and installed the app.
Deep links works for both browsers (Safari and Chrome).
If you push the bnc.lt forward button it opens App Store for both Safari and Chrome.
Next time you open a link deep link:
Safari: It asks if you want to open the link in app store
Chrome: It asks if you want to open app and at the same time redirects to app store. If you click open in app next time you click a deep link it will open in app.
So in other words you can still open the app from Chrome after clicking the bnc.lt forward link in staus bar. This is because Chrome asks for opening the app and not app store.
For Safari i end up in an irreversible state where the deep link always open app store and not the app.
Alex from Branch here: this is the expected behavior. Unfortunately our fallback options are rather limited at the moment, due to the changes to Universal Links in iOS 9.2.
TL;DR: it's a bit of an edge case that most users wouldn't encounter, but you can easily work around it by making use of our Deepviews functionality.
Basically, here's the logic behind what you're seeing:
When you open the link on a device without the app installed, you end up on our bnc.lt server, and we redirect you to the App Store so you can get the app. This is good.
When you open the link on a device with the app installed for the first time, your device detects the Universal Link and opens the app immediately. All this happens locally on your device, and you never even get to our bnc.lt server. This is also good.
When you push the bnc.lt forward button, you're telling your device 'I don't want you to immediately open the app...show me the web content for this link instead'. In the case of a Branch link, this 'web content' is simply a redirect to the App Store. At this point, Branch has no way to know whether you the app is installed or not, so we have to assume it isn't and you get the same treatment as 1. above. This is not so good, but right now we don't have any better options due to the way Apple has designed the system.
The next time you open a link, your device remembers that you pushed the bnc.lt button in the past and just takes you straight to the web content. I'm not sure why Safari does it this way, because I can't imagine many situations where this would be desirable and it is leading to a lot of confusion for users.
The real problem here is that when you press bnc.lt to bypass the app, your device remembers this preference and executes it every time it sees a bnc.lt link in future. Chrome still 'works' because it is proactively confirming the preference each time in 4., whereas Safari just plows forward. There are a few options for what happens next:
In Apple's ideal world, you'd end up on a normal webpage where you could simply scroll up and use the Open in app button to reverse this preference. But since Branch is immediately redirecting you to the App Store, this isn't an option. You could consider using our Deepviews feature, since this does provide some real web content in place of the immediate App Store redirect you're seeing right now.
In most situations, you can still long-press on the link and select Open in app, but this doesn't help users who don't know the option is there.
In the worst-case scenario, you end up on the App Store page and just press the Open button (instead of Install). Thanks to Branch's magic, you'll still end up in the right place!
Now from iOS 9.2, Apple no longer supports URI schemes for deep
linking, developers must implement Universal Links in order to deep
link properly on iOS.
Universal links let you replace custom URL schemes with standard HTTP or HTTPS links. Universal links work for all users: If users have your app installed, the link takes them directly into your app; if they don’t have your app installed, the link opens your website in Safari.
To learn all about universal links, see
How to support Universal Links in iOS App and setup server for it?
Example
https://github.com/vineetchoudhary/iOS-Universal-Links
UPDATE [1]
How Branch links work (Branch.io)
If you take a lock at fundamentals of Branch's contextual deep links. You found Branch.io also using traditional deep-linking
1. Creating links
When you’ve integrated the Mobile SDK, you can create a Branch link every time a user clicks to share or invite another user from within your app. Your app makes a call to Branch.io, and Branch.io return a Branch link.
2. Tying data to links
3. Clicking links
4. Using data
Check the Clicking links step, Branch.io just map your website URL with your app URI scheme but URI schemeno longer supported by Safari. So, move to Universal Links is only the option in order to deep linking in iOS 9.2 or you can wait for some solution by Branch.io. Thanks.
I have setup my AASA JSON file to open the app when someone visits myDomain.com/ShowInTheApp/*
This works from Notes App, Email, Gmail App, Gmail web on safari and basically any other websites other myDomain.com .
When myDomain.com/chooseAppORweb.html contains a link to myDomain.com/ShowInTheApp/ , safari always opens it in the same tab, app wont get launched. I can tap and hold the link to show the context menu that contains an entry "Open In [My app name]" which will indeed launch my app. But not by single tapping on the link.
When I do the exact same steps from another domain, NOTmyDomain.com/chooseAppORweb.html always launches the app without issues.
Has anyone succeeded in launching the app consistently from the same domain using UL ?
Also, if there is an Apple's document that explains any of these behaviours, please share the link.
I'm not sure when Apple added this to their documentation, but it's explained on their Support Universal Links page, in the first note:
In iOS 9 and later, universal links let users open your app when they tap links to your website within WKWebView and UIWebView views and Safari pages, in addition to links that result in a call to openURL:, such as those that occur in Mail, Messages, and other apps.
When a user is browsing your website in Safari and they tap a universal link to a URL in the same domain as the current webpage, iOS respects the user’s most likely intent and opens the link in Safari. If the user taps a universal link to a URL in a different domain, iOS opens the link in your app.
For users who are running versions of iOS earlier than 9.0, tapping a universal link to your website opens the link in Safari.
(Emphasis added)
Essentially, once a user reaches a page hosted on your domain in Safari, any links they follow on your domain will be opened in Safari, even if they're defined as Universal Links by your app.
As st.derrick mentioned above, this is the in-place behavior for Universal links. If you have previously been taken to the App from the link, but then choose to be taken to the website when prompted with a long press, the functionality to open the App will break. You can remedy this by long-pressing again and choosing to open in-app. It's not an ideal solution, but it is the only way I've seen it be fixed. I hope this helps!
When iOS Facebook's in-app browser loads my web page, I have a link there to "Download App Now" which links to the App Store Page, i.e.
https://itunes.apple.com/my/app/XXXXX/12345678?ls=1&mt=8
If this is loaded in Safari, it launches the corresponding app page in App Store correctly and users can instantly download the app.
However, if launched within Facebook's in-app browser, the browser shows a warning: "Leave Facbook? This web page is trying to open an app outside of Facebook. Are you sure you want to open it?"
If I click "Open App", nothing happens. I've tried changing the link using href, onclick, target=_blank and nothing works, basically FB app just failed to launch the external app page.
Is this a bug with Facebook app? I need the open app link feature as I'm showing a website and wish to redirect mobile users to download the app instead.
I'm using iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 8.1, and the latest Facebook app. I tried it in my iPad 4 iOS 7, same problem too.
Thanks!
As noted by WizKid, this is/was a known problem. It should be fixed with the most recent version of the app.
I'm trying to integrate Facebook Share into my App. For that, I'm following this tutorial.
I can share something in Facebook, but I can't seem to make deep linking working. If I clicked in my share link in my wall, it won't open my native apps but it always open another tab in safari and open the link.
In the Apps detail Page in Facebook Apps, I've already checked Enable Deep Linking. But, because the apps isn't submitted to the app store yet, I left the iPhone App Store Id and iPad App Store Id to 0.
What is that I miss?