Launching Android Application from link or email

Question

I have been trying to launch the application from a link on email or from a posting on some social networking websites. The problem is that in some device or some gmail application on the android don't show the anchor tags or link that I have specified.

The intent-filter that I set to my activity is below:

 <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
 <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
 <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
 <data android:scheme="myappname" />

And I am sending the email with this anchor tag

myappname://processtobedone/?id=1

It works fine with the email application that I have on Huawei device but in device's default gmail application it is not showing it has an link and in some devices by default it appends https: as suffix for the tag and launches the browser.

Answer 1

Instead of using a custom scheme, you can have an <intent-filter> that identifies a URL that you control:

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>

    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>

    <data
        android:host="www.this-so-does-not-exist.com"
        android:path="/something"
        android:scheme="http"/>
</intent-filter>

Then, links to http://www.this-so-does-not-exist.com/something will bring up your app (in a chooser, along with the Web browse) on devices that have your app, and will bring up your Web page on devices that do not have your app.

Answer 2

Make a real link (http:) that goes a website you control, such as a static website on amazon s3, use the javascript on that site to detect an android user agent and then redirect to a link with the anchor tag.