Deeplinking mobile browsers to native app - Issues with Chrome when app isn't installed

Question

I have a webpage, lets call it entry.html.

When a user enters this page, a javascript code (see below) is attempting to deep-link the user to the native iOS / Android app.

If the deep-link fails (probably if the app isn't installed on device), user should "fall back" to another page- lets call it fallback.html.

here is the javascript code that is running on entry.html:

$(function(){
    window.location = 'myapp://';
    setTimeout(function(){
        window.location = 'fallback.html';
    }, 500);
});

this is a standard deep-linking method that is recommended all over the network; try to deep-link, and if the timeout fires it means that deep-link didn't occur- so fallback.

this works fine, as long app is installed on device.

but if the app isn't installed, this is the behaviour when trying to deep-link:

Mobile Safari: I see an alert message saying "Safari cannot open this page..." for a moment, and then it falls-back properly to fallback.html- which is the expected behaviour.

Mobile Chrome is my problem.

when the app isn't installed, browser is actually redirected to the myapp:// url, which is of course, invalid- so i get a "not found" page, and fall-back doesn't occur.

Finally- my question is:

How can I fix my code so FALL-BACK WILL OCCUR on mobile Chrome as well? just like mobile Safari?

note: i see that LinkedIn mobile website does this properly, with Safari & Chrome, with or without the app installed, but i couldn't trace the code responsible for it :(

note2: i tried appending an iframe instead of window.location = url, this works only on Safari, mobile Chrome doesn't deep-link when appending an iFrame even if app is installed.

Thanks all!

---

UPDATE:

i found a decent solution, and answered my own question. see accepted answer for my solution.

Cecrops

A similar question here #5680418 – Handbreadth

@AlexKey thanks. but this doesn't answer my question. how to deal with mobile Chrome when app isn't installed? – Cecrops

Here is a follow up post, be careful yo read the comments the author didn't know about http linking: aawaara.com/post/88310470252/… – Handbreadth

Hey @geevee. I'd recommend just abstracting all of this away into the Branch service (branch.io) - a project that I contribute to. Branch links take care of all this complexity for you and pick the right method depending the browser. The problem with your selected answer is the chooser. It's annoying for a user to do this and people often abandon. If you use the intents in Chrome and other mechanisms for Firefox/default browser/others, it'll just seamlessly open up the app. – Coerce

Answer 1

for whoever is interested, i managed to find a decent solution to solve these issues with deeplinking Chrome on Android.

i abandoned the myapp:// approach, i left it functioning only in cases of an iOS device.

for Android devices, i'm now using intents which are conceptually different than the myapp:// protocol.

I'm mainly a web developer, not an Android developer, so it took me some time to understand the concept, but it's quite simple. i'll try to explain and demonstrate MY solution here (note that there are other approaches that could be implemented with intents, but this one worked for me perfectly).

here is the relevant part in the Android app manifest, registering the intent rules (note the android:scheme="http" - we'll talk about it shortly):

<receiver android:name=".DeepLinkReceiver">
    <intent-filter >
        <data android:scheme="http" android:host="www.myapp.com" />
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>

now, after this is declared in the app manifest, i'm sending myself an email with "http://www.myapp.com" in the message.

when link is tapped with the Android device, a "chooser" dialog comes up, asking with which application i want to open the following? [chrome, myapp]

the reason this dialog came up upon tapping on a "regular" url, is because we registered the intent with the http scheme.

with this approach, the deeplink isn't even handled in the webpage, it's handled by the device itself, when tapping a matching link to an existing intent rule defined in the Android app manifest.

and yes, as i said, this approach is different by concept than the iOS approach, which invokes the deeplink from within the webpage, but it solves the problem, and it does the magic.

Note: when app isn't installed, no chooser dialog will come up, you'll just get navigated to the actual web page with the given address (unless you have more than 1 browser, so you'll need to choose one... but lets not be petty).

i really hope that this could help someone who's facing the same thing.. wish i had such an explanation ;-)

cheers.

Cecrops

So it's working on Android, but it does not work on iOS devices, is it? – Chiffon

@Chiffon iOS devices keep working with the method mentioned in the question, try to deeplink + fallback to a web page. – Cecrops

even on iOS Chrome, or Google mail? – Chiffon

Answer 2

It is very important to make sure that when you try to open a deeplink URL with JavaScript that the URL is properly formatted for the device and browser. (If you do not use the appropriate deeplink URL for the browser/platform, a user may be redirected to a “Page Not Found”, which is what you experience.)

Now you must note that Chrome on Android has a different URL format than the old standard Android browser ¹! You need to annotate the deep links using href="android-app://" in the HTML markup of your web pages. You can do this in the section for each web page by adding a tag and specifying the deep link as an alternate URI.

For example, the following HTML snippet shows how you might specify the corresponding deep link in a web page that has the URL example://gizmos.

<html>
<head>
    <link rel="alternate"
          href="android-app://com.example.android/example/gizmos" />
    ...
</head>
<body> ... </body>

For more details, see the references here:
https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/intents
https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/webmasters/server
https://developer.android.com/training/app-indexing/enabling-app-indexing.html#webpages

And here's a deep link testing tool for Android: https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/webmasters/test.html

Hope that helps.

¹ Since the old AOSP browser was replaced by chromium, this is now the default way to handle deep links for recent Android versions. Nonetheless, Android still requires a conditional soltion, because older OS versions still use the AOSP browser.

Blinni

Answer 3

I am Using this Code to for deeplinking. If the app is installed the app will open up.. If the app is not installed then this remains as it is.. If you wish to add any other condition for app no install then just uncomment the setTimeout code .

<script>

var deeplinking_url = scootsy://vendor/1;
$(document).ready(function(){
    call_me_new(deeplinking_url);
});

var call_me_new = function(deeplinking_url){

    if(deeplinking_url!=''){
        var fallbackUrl ='http://scootsy.com/';
        var iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
        var nativeSchemaUrl = deeplinking_url;
        console.log(nativeSchemaUrl);

        iframe.id = "app_call_frame";
        iframe.style.border = "none";
        iframe.style.width = "1px";
        iframe.style.height = "1px";
        iframe.onload = function () {
            document.location = nativeSchemaUrl;
        };
        iframe.src = nativeSchemaUrl; //iOS app schema url
        window.onload = function(){
            document.body.appendChild(iframe);
        }

        //IF the App is not install then it will remain on the same page.If you wish to send the use to other page then uncomment the below code and send a time interval for the redirect.
        /*
        setTimeout(function(){
            console.log('Iframe Removed...');
            document.getElementById("app_call_frame").remove();

        window.location = fallbackUrl; //fallback url
        },5000);*/
    }
};
</script>

Blunger

The use of the iframe to avoid any sort of navigation of the page is just what I was looking for - thanks. – Panjabi

iframe's 'onload' doesn't work: #20573234 – Cytolysin

Answer 4

I have created a Javascript plugin, which supports most of the modern browsers on mobile. But it requires to have deep linking landing pages to be hosted on cross domain(different than universal link url) to work on ios9 Facebook using universal linking. There is also different way to get that working on the Facebook iOS9 using Facebook SDK. I am sharing this if anyone might find this helpful. Currently it does not fallback option, but if falls back to the App Store.

https://github.com/prabeengiri/DeepLinkingToNativeApp

Inkster

How can I open specific route? Eg. game://room/{id} Does it opens automatically or waits for user's click? – Mickelson

Answer 5

setTimeout(function () { if (document.hasFocus()) { window.location = 'URL WILL BEHERE';} }, 2000);
         window.location = 'app://';

Need to check document.hasFocus() here because if app is open then playstore url is also open in browser

Sourwood

this thing only works in chrome, but doesn't give desired behaviour in other browsers – Gae

Then use a browser check in your javascript. Run this code if it's chrome, and the other code if it's safari. – Intensive

Answer 6

I also had similar issue, there is a possible alternative for this. If the app is not installed on user's device we can redirect that to some other url.To know more about it Check Here

Example:

<a href="intent://scan/#Intent;scheme=zxing;package=com.google.zxing.client.android;S.browser_fallback_url=YOUR_WEBSITE_URL;end"> Take a QR code </a>

Gae

Answer 7

In my case its working fine in opera and chrome browser my deeplink url is "intent://contentUrl + #Intent;scheme=" +envHost +;package="+envHost+";end";

For other browser create iframe and append the url. Note -: iframe url append having issue with old device and in firefox its opening app dialog .

Myself