Hyperlinks with non HTTP schema in GMAIL

Question

So I'm making mobile apps and want to do links to activate things in both iOS and Android using the same URL. I know how to do this already. my intent on android is something like :

            <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="activity.action android:scheme="myapp"/>
            </intent-filter>

My problem is when I go to test this and want to do a hyperlink in an email myapp://activity.action is not recognized as a url in gmail on android and displays as plain text. is there a way to fix this? how do i get non standard schema recognized by gmail as a link?

yep adding something like test text please still gets stripped out and all you get is the text — 1tSurge, Oct 03 '14 at 20:49
Gmail has a URL scheme protection. The same goes for many websites. I suggest you create a webpage on a server that redirects the user to your protocol and send that page to your users through Gmail. — Pedro Oliveira, Oct 03 '14 at 20:54
You don't need to send the user to a webpage that redirects them to a custom scheme. If you own a domain, you can create an intent filter for a specific URLs. — Bryan Herbst, Oct 03 '14 at 21:05

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

8

Custom schemes are not supported by gmail and chrome apps. Don't do this. Follow android guidelines for opening app from browser / link. See the following post Make a link in the Android browser start up my app?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

Community

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answered Oct 03 '14 at 21:54

SohailAziz

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Is there anywhere that this limitation of gmail/chrome/etc is officially documented? – swooby Mar 07 '16 at 23:23

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 03 '14 at 21:07

You can create intent filters for HTTP and HTTPS URLs as well as URLs with custom schemes.

For example, you might set up an intent filter like so:

<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:scheme="http"
        android:host="example.com"
        android:path="/my-path" />

</intent-filter>

Hyperlinks with non HTTP schema in GMAIL

2 Answers2

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