Android Play Store market:// link is no longer working?

Question

I've been redirecting my users for the past year from my domain:

http://example.com/get

to: market://details?id=com.example.myapp

Today I've check this on Nexus 5/LG G3/OnePlus One from the chrome browser app and it stopped working!

Now, when my users try to download the app they are redirected to a broken link.

Anyone know anything about this change in the Chrome app in Android?

Answer 1

from reading the chrome's version 40 release, there are some insight i d like to share http://blog.chromium.org/2014/12/chrome-40-beta-powerful-offline-and.html

they updated to Content Security Policy Level 2, which has a stronger control over redirects. https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/content-security-policy/#changes-from-level-1

1. The path component of a source expression is now ignored if the resource being loaded is the result of a redirect, as described in §4.2.2.3 Paths and Redirects.

2. Redirects are blocked by default, and explicitly allowed with a new unsafe-redirect expression.

So I did some testing. if your initial action started from redirect (no matter window.location or http 302) it will show an error. but once i created a hyperlink to market:// and explicitly clicked it, it worked fine.

for now i ended up creating a webpage in between, where i ask the user to click the link to proceed.

Answer 2

I was testing this url on different devices with different OS/Play Store/ Play Services/ Browsers. looks like it's related to browser but not OS or Play Services.

Initially I updated Play Services and Google Play Store and my old Chrome (v18) was opening market://details?id= url fine.

Afterward I had updated my Chrome (v18) to version 40. And it's not working any more.

Meanwhile, FireFox and default "Browsers" still opens this url and redirects to Google Play Store app.

P.S. I have registered issue in Chromium bug tracker. Let's see if there will be any response: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&q=market&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Week%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified&id=454396&thanks=454396&ts=1422888121

UPDATE [6.05.15] : Unfortunately, they decided not to fix this issue, saying, that it's planned behaviour. As they said, user should click the link by himself. Only then re-direct to the app on devices is allowed.

So, there is only one "work-around", that I see for now: create a page, that contains text like "Click link below to go to the app", followed by link like:

<a href="market://details?id=com.example.myapp"> Load Example App </a>

or

<a href="intent://foo.bar#Intent;scheme=blabla;package=com.example.myapp;end" > Load App/ Activate your Profile </a>