Deep Linking Guide

Deep Linking gives you the ability to direct a user to specific content within your app via a push notification.

There are a variety of ways to send deep links and also service providers who manage deep linking for you but below are two common methods.

Custom URLs

Custom URLs are likely one of the most common forms of sending deep links to mobile apps. This is because they are easy to set up and most apps already have one so it’s like creating a custom internet domain within your app. To use this, the app must be installed on a user’s phone.

Apple uses Universal Links in iOS 9 which are standard web links that point to both a web page or content within an app using a custom URL. When these links are opened, iOS checks to see if any installed device is registered for that domain. If it is, the app is opened without loading the web page. However, if no devices are registered, the URL will redirect the user to the App Store.

Android App Links work similarly to iOS Universal Links. A standard web link is used which points to both a web page and a piece of content inside an app.

Deep Linking Services

Branch: The following steps will need to be taken in order to get Branch deep links working in conjunction with the Taplytics SDK:

1. Integrate the Branch SDK into your app
2. Implement the Branch methods for receiving pushes and parsing links
3. Ensure that your app has implemented a receiver for handling external URLs; if a Branch key is detected, it should run OpenUrl. See Apple docs here and Android docs here.
4. Create a Branch deep link, and add the additional key (branch) and value (your deep link) to your push custom data when configuring the push on the Taplytics dashboard.

Custom Payloads in Push Notifications: Using custom key:value pairs in Transactional Pushes to direct users to specific content.