How can I open a URL in Android's web browser from my application?

Question

How to open an URL from code in the built-in web browser rather than within my application?

I tried this:

try {     Intent myIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(download_link));     startActivity(myIntent); } catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {     Toast.makeText(this, "No application can handle this request."         + " Please install a webbrowser",  Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();     e.printStackTrace(); } 

but I got an Exception:

No activity found to handle Intent{action=android.intent.action.VIEW data =www.google.com 

Answer 1

Try this:

Intent browserIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("http://www.google.com")); startActivity(browserIntent); 

That works fine for me.

As for the missing "http://" I'd just do something like this:

if (!url.startsWith("http://") && !url.startsWith("https://"))    url = "http://" + url; 

I would also probably pre-populate your EditText that the user is typing a URL in with "http://".

Answer 2

A common way to achieve this is with the next code:

String url = "http://www.stackoverflow.com"; Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); i.setData(Uri.parse(url));  startActivity(i);  

that could be changed to a short code version ...

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW).setData(Uri.parse("http://www.stackoverflow.com"));       startActivity(intent);  

or :

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("http://www.stackoverflow.com"));  startActivity(intent); 

the shortest! :

startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("http://www.stackoverflow.com")));