Deep link not opening native app when opened in Facebook/Messenger (working in other apps...)

Question

When opened in Messenger or Facebook, my custom deep link does not open my native app anymore but shows the App Store instead, while it's still working effectively in Safari, SMS, Whatsapp apps...

Flow is pretty standard :

user clicks on an url redirecting to a web page opening the App Store if scheme_based url fails - code snippet:

var loadedAt = +new Date;
setTimeout(
  function() {
    if (+new Date - loadedAt < 2000){
      window.location = appstoreFail;
    }
  }
,25);

//Try launching the app using URL schemes
window.open(appUrlScheme,"_self");

Any idea why Facebook is not recognizing app scheme urls? Did they change anything? Facebook or Messenger are opening a web view, so there might be something with it but I've the feeling it was working before and stoped working recently...

Thank you very much for your suggestion, or any workaround to open a native app from Facebook/Messenger!

Lucas

Answer 1

Facebook can do whatever they want with any network request in their app and it seems that they choose to block non-http requests in recent versions of their app...