Keep getting alert view message of "Open this page in YourAppName?" when trying to launch app from safari

Question

I need to be able to launch my iOS app from the Safari browser. So I went to my .plist file in xcode and added an item to my URL Schemes and entered in the string of myappname.

Now if I go to Safari, and type myappname:// in the URL address bar and submit it, it shows me a UIAlertView that says Open this page in "MyAppName"? with options for Cancel and Open.

If I tap Open it successfully opens my app, however I want to do this without the UIAlertView popping up with that message.

I have done some quick searching online and it looks like people keep having trouble with this whenever a new iOS update comes out and I can't seem to find a recent solution or answer.

I am on an iPhone 4s with iOS 7.1, and I'm using xcode 5.1 if that makes any difference.

Also, I have been using an app available in the App Store called "Frontback" that successfully does this same thing without the UIAlertView showing in Safari so this is definitely possible.

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

I use this method in my app without getting a UIAlertView. It just goes straight to the app.

I had a similar issue when I first started implementing it. I suspect that it's not a problem with myappname://, but possibly a problem with how you added the URL Scheme.

Make sure to assign your custom value (myappname) to the URL Identifier object (com.mycompany.myappname). The URL identifier should be a String and the URL Schemes should be an array with your custom value being a String.

The XML version of your .plist should look like this:

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleURLName</key>
        <string>com.mycompany.myappname</string>
        <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
        <array>
            <string>myappname</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</array>   

Answer 2

Here is how to avoid the "Open this page in YourAppName?" popup when using Universal links.

My observation is as follows:

1. When using html links that the user needs to click then the popup does not appear.
2. If you want to use window.location.href or window.location.replace to directly get back to the app without the user needing to click a link then it seems to depend on if is there is a delay before the redirect. If the page loads fast and you directly call window.location.replace then the popup will appear. However if you set a timeout to 400ms and then trigger window.location.replace then there will be no popup.

I found this when noticing that after a change and redeployment of the html page, the popup was not shown. This was the case for me because I use a cloudflare worker to host the html page and after an update the initial response time is about 400ms while it is just 15ms if requested again.