Open iPhone App from an Email Link

Question

I've working on a program where an email is sent to a user, and a link to open the iPhone app is embedded in the email. The problem is that when the user clicks the link to open the app, mail has stripped out the colon, so the link no longer works!

The link being created basically looks like this:

@"<BR><BR><BR><A HREF=\"http://myApp://\">Open App</A>"

But the link, when clicked in the email, opens this in the browser instead:

myApp//

with no colon, so the app doesn't launch and the browser says it can't find the page.

Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks!

I've seen those tutorials and they are very helpful for setting up an app to accept URLs to launch, but they don't say anything about placing the custom URL in emails and preserving the URL in the email. Unfortunately, if you leave off the http:// then the link is no longer a link in the email. :/ — P.M., Aug 02 '12 at 23:06
Actually it turns out leaving off the http:// works if you open the email in Apple's mail app, but gmail disables the link without the http:// probably as some sort of security measure. Any thoughts anyone? — P.M., Aug 02 '12 at 23:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '12 at 07:18

1

It just should be:

@"<BR><BR><BR><A HREF=\"myApp://\">Open App</A>"

As a workaround for custom urls being blocked by gmail, what you could do is set up something like http://myapp.mydomain.com/ up do redirect to myapp://... That way it'll look like a normal domain but open your app. On the plus you will be able to see how many people click your link, though on the down side it'll pop via Safari first.

answered Aug 03 '12 at 07:18

hypercrypt

15,389
6
48
59

This shows me the error `Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid.` – Sayed Muhammad Idrees Jun 06 '22 at 18:35
Then the app either isn't installed or you have declined to open the link in the past so it's been blocked. Probably best to implement this using app links these days – hypercrypt Oct 28 '22 at 13:51

Teena Thomas · Answer 2 · 2012-08-12T20:47:29.957

0

Add 'http:' to all your images and urls, iphones dont recognize links w/o that. also use single quotes for them(').eg. <a href='http://xyz.com'></a><img src='http://xyz.com/pqr/abc.jpg'></img>

edited Aug 12 '12 at 20:47

answered Aug 09 '12 at 14:29

Teena Thomas

5,139
1
13
17

Open iPhone App from an Email Link

2 Answers2

Linked