iOS Today Widget Universal Links From Lock Screen and Notification Center

Question

We have a today widget to deep link into the app. The deep links work just fine when the user accesses the widget from the home screen. However, when a user accesses the widget when the device is locked, or when the user slides down from the top of the screen, the links open in Safari.

I was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue, and if so, how they solved it.

Answer 1

Here was the solution we came upon (Swift 4.1). We needed to support a custom URL scheme to tell iOS that we can open links from the today widget. This uses a different UIApplication delegate function. Along with implementing func application(_ application: UIApplication, continue userActivity: NSUserActivity, restorationHandler: @escaping ([Any]?) -> Void) -> Bool, we also need to implement func application(_ app: UIApplication, open url: URL, options: [UIApplicationOpenURLOptionsKey : Any] = [:]) -> Bool

First, in Info.plist, we have our supported schemes under CFBUndleURLTypes.

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
        <array>
            <string>todayWidgetScheme</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</array>

Then, also in Info.plist, we also listed the scheme under LSApplicationQueriesSchemes.

<key>LSApplicationQueriesSchemes</key>
<array>
    <string>todayWidgetScheme</string>
</array>

Next, when opening the link from the today widget, set the url scheme to the iOS recognized todayWidgetScheme.

func openAppFromTodayWidget() {
    if let url = URL(string: "https://url.com") {
        var components = URLComponents(url: url, resolvingAgainstBaseURL: true)
        components?.scheme = "todayWidgetScheme"

        if let todayWidgetUrl = components?.url {
            extensionContext?.open(todayWidgetUrl)
        }
    }
}

Finally, in AppDelegate.swift, when iOS asks the application to handle the universal link, set the original url scheme

func application(_ app: UIApplication, open url: URL, options: [UIApplicationOpenURLOptionsKey : Any] = [:]) -> Bool {
    if url.scheme == "todayWidgetScheme" {
        var components = URLComponents(url: url, resolvingAgainstBaseURL: true)
        components?.scheme = "https"

        if let todayWidgetUrl = components?.url {
            // do your thing
            return true
        }
    }

    return false
}