iOS Safari does not recognize url schemes after user cancels

Question

I'm noticing strange behavior in Safari recently.

I register a url scheme for the my app, and enter myapp:// into Safari. This launches my app immediately.

Then I go back to Safari, and enter myapp:// into Safari again, this time it prompts me "Open this page in "myapp"?" Cancel or Open.

My app will launch if I tap on open, and subsequent attempts the same alert shows. If I try tapping on cancel, my app will not launch. which is expected.

However, if I enter myapp:// into the URL bar again, I'm prompted "Cannot Open Page" "Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid."

This will fail in the same way for all subsequent attempts, until I kill Safari and re-start it, or open another tab.

This is the same behavior with Youtube and Evernote. my guess is that Safari cached the URL as an invalid URL when the User taps on cancel. Is there official documentation on this behavior?

Bbserved in iOS 8.1.2 and iOS 6.1.3

Answer 1

In 9.1 the issue still exists. The solution for me is just restarting safari (swipe up to clear it from background).

Answer 2

I had the same problem. Once cancelled, it would give that error.

What I did was sending an extra parameter with a timestamp, so Safari would not cache it. So after the last param, I added a foo param with the number of milliseconds since midnight January 1, 1970. I use as3, but this should be readable for all developers:

var foo:Number = new Date().time; //The number of milliseconds since midnight January 1, 1970 var urlRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url+"&foo="+foo);