How to open an installed app from an email URL in Android?

Question

I want to open my app from an email URL, basically like the example shown below for Twitter.com.

Email with link:

Email with link

Selection to open app or browser:

Select app or browser

After you click on the app choice, the Twitter app opens:

Open Twitter app

I tried the following code, but it is not working:

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

If anyone has a proper answer, please write some examples here.

change android:host value to your url host path and android:scheme to https from http. should work — Vny Kumar, Sep 26 '14 at 05:22
@VnyKumar i want to open my app what should i write in manifest file? — Roadies, Sep 26 '14 at 05:45
Just go through this [Deeplinking](https://developer.android.com/training/app-indexing/deep-linking.html) google document. You will come to know about this deep linking concept. I hope this will help some body. — Aristo Michael, Mar 30 '15 at 12:01

score 16 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

16

The following code worked for me:

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"></action>

    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"></category>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"></category>

    <data
        android:host="www.my.app.com"
        android:path="launch"
        android:scheme="http"></data>
</intent-filter>

With the email link set as http://www.my.app.com/launch.

Ref: Launching Android Application from link or email

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

1
1

answered Sep 26 '14 at 06:08

hemu

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2

Were you able to configure this within your `config.xml` file, or were you updating `AndroidManifest.xml` directly ? – Alexandre Bourlier Mar 30 '16 at 10:25
Could you explain how to make it accept both http and https? – rraallvv Apr 03 '19 at 13:20
@rraallvv, not sure, but did you tried adding another intent filter with `https`? – hemu Apr 04 '19 at 08:56
That did the trick, thanks. I was searching for something like a regex pattern, although I'm not sure if that's posible. – rraallvv Apr 04 '19 at 11:14

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 26 '14 at 06:08

Ex: Your url will be something like https://roadies.com and you have the intent filter in manifest as below

        android:name="com.droid.MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/app_name" >

        <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
        <data
            android:host="roadies.com"
            android:scheme="https" />
    </intent-filter>

    </activity>

Were you able to configure this within your `config.xml` file, or were you updating `AndroidManifest.xml` directly ? — Alexandre Bourlier, Mar 30 '16 at 10:25

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

For me, none of the answers posted here worked. I tried tens of different syntaxes without any success. I was getting a parsing error while building the app via Cordova.

I finally encountered this answered which led me on the right track.

So I created a hook in the PROJECT_ROOT/hooks/after_prepare/ folder called 010_add_intent_filters.sh. Here is the content of this hook :

!/usr/bin/bash

MANIFEST=./platforms/android/AndroidManifest.xml

grep -q pathPattern $MANIFEST && { print "Manifest already modified. Nothing to do."; exit 0; }

AFTER_LINE='android:name="MainActivity"'
ADDITION='\
  <intent-filter>\
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"></action>\
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"></category>\
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"></category>\
    <data android:scheme="https" android:host="google.com" android:pathPattern=".*"></data>\
  </intent-filter>
';

sed -i -e "/${AFTER_LINE}/a${ADDITION}" $MANIFEST

This finally worked. No modification to config.xml is required if you take the hook path. I hope this helps someone in need.

PS: I am convinced Cordova is a great technology, but I have rarely seen such a badly documented library... How painful it is to work with it is just unbelievable.

How to open an installed app from an email URL in Android?

3 Answers3

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