I'm working on Facebook App Links for sharing content from my iPad-only app. The App Links work correctly on an iPad -- if the link is clicked on in the Facebook app, my app opens directly, or redirects to the App Store.
However, when clicking on the link from the iPhone Facebook app, it prompts the user to go to the App Store, which then does nothing, as there is no iPhone version of the App.
Is there a way to only have the App Link be active for iPad, and to fall back to the web version for iPhone?
Here are my app links tags:
<meta property="al:ipad:url" content="com.myapp://" />
<meta property="al:ipad:app_store_id" content="12345" />
<meta property="al:ipad:app_name" content="my app" />
<meta property="al:web:url" content="www.myapp.com/123" />
<meta property="al:web:should_fallback" content="false" />
This is not possible with App Links. The al:web:should_fallback property applies to all platforms — there is no way to set to only to iPhone/Android.
Additionally, setting al:web:should_fallback = true causes deep linking not to work on iOS, as you noted. This is a known issue with Facebook's implementation, and doesn't respect the official standards. It does work correctly in Android.
These are some of the reasons why we built Branch.io (full disclosure: I'm on the Branch team). You get far better device-level control, and don't need to worry about these edge cases.