URL shortcuts to iOS Apps stopped working

Hi Brian,

I fear this may be an unnoticed side-effect of the Bug Fix for the following Topic. Without that fix, Shortcuts to websites inside "full screen web-app windows" (i.e., Shortcuts on a Panel that is "pinned to home screen") would take-over the browser-app window and there was no way to return from them.

Now we force open URLs into Safari; and perhaps this is breaking "App Shortcut URLs".

Let's see if others are experiencing this while we research.

i believe I am seeing a similar behavior on my Android. The URL reads as unsafe when running it directly from the panel. It's fine for the URL shortcut screen.

hi, i just run action tiles and im having same problem as DGHome says !!

Please report Android behavior as a distinct issue. Thank-you.

Hi Terry,

I am hoping that at some point this can work again. Perhaps seperate tile shortcuts for Launching apps versus opening web pages ?

Controlling music (Sonos in my case) in addition to lights and temp etc.. helps make the Action Tiles Dashboard my go to starting point. I can currently select specific music stations or playlists from my dashboard and control volume etc.. but when I need access to the full music capability, I liked that I could launch the Sonos app with a single click on the dashboard.

Yes Brian, ... we definitely want to investigate and fix this (I hope there's a way!)...

Please open the topic and allocate some of your Topic Votes to help us prioritize the issue.

Correction: only shortcuts to iOS apps is broken. Adding "http://" corrected links to websites opened in Safari. My apologies!

So I noticed that on IOS 9.3.5 the app linking is broken (IOS App Shortcuts are failing). However, only in the panels themselves. If I click my way through to where we build those links (My Shortcuts) and click on the shortcut, it WILL open the app. But not from the panel where that shortcut is then placed.

So the app linking still works but something about how you embed those tiles in a panel changes the interaction...

Thanks; I'm marking this a Confirmed Bug. It is without doubt a side-effect of the way we implemented a fix to the "unable to go-back from a web page from a pinned to home screen Panel".

Thanks for all the reports and diagnostics!

No ETA for a fix though; stay tuned to this Topic for any updates.

While not optimal, and not 'pretty' from a usability perspective, I've jiggered some php code on one of my webservers that I can call from AT to do this ... for example to open my harmony remote on my iPad I have a link to 

https://somewebserver.com/action.php?title=harmony

that calls the following PHP page

I KNOW there is a more elegant way to do this.... this was just a down and dirty hack and will clean it up later. As it is running locally on my NAS box, the responsiveness is good, the user experience of opening safari and confirming the app open ... not so much ... but it works and somewhat meets the WAF quota

<?php

$var = strip_tags($_GET['title']); //grab the GET string

$url = $var . '://foo';

//which app was called

if($var == 'harmony'){

    header("Location: $url");

    die();

}elseif ($var == 'callJohn'){

    header("Location: facetime:john@somedomain.com");

    die();

}else{

    header("Location: https://google.com");

}

?>

Until the bug in AT is fixed, this may need to be my work around (unless there is a better ... less user impactful way)

Now if I could only find a list of current app URL schemes ... everything I am coming up with is dead links

It's so odd that Apple and App developers don't make this easier... 

Google / Android seems to be putting a lot of effort in encouraging App developers to learn to use "deep linking"...

verified.  I am able to open on my IPad.  

The question it asks "open in -app'name-". Is there a way around that ?

Verified .... Thank you !

I was able to launch The Sonos App and Google Maps App from action tiles on my iPhone. The question Jason refers to was only asked on the initial launch of each app.

Many thanks!!

Interesting.  It asked me that question each time I tried to open it