Get referrer string for Universal Link?

Question

I implemented Universal Links in our iOS 9 app and they work by calling a method in AppDelegate.swift, in which I get an NSUserActvity with an URL attached to it.

Is there a way to get the (HTTP-) referer? I need to know on which website the user has tapped the link that opened the app.

Answer 1

I found another interesting solution if you need to support iOS 9 and 10 - https://appmetrica.yandex.com/blog/referrer-based-tracking-dlya-ios-tochnaya-atributsiya-dlya-lyubogo-istochnika-trafika.

Since iOS 11 I guess can be used NSUserActivity > referrerURL.

In short:

• SFSafariViewController uses the same cookies as Safari app.
• You can open invisible SFSafariViewController inside your app.
• If your site contains some cookie - use Universal Link to pass it back to the app.

Though it requires to implement something like tracking link on your site.

Answer 2

No, there is no way to get the referrer. An Apple employee made that pretty clear on the developer forums: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/65423

They say that the only way to get some kind of referrer would be to append it to the URL. Maybe take a look Google's campaign tracking URLs (utm_...).