how do app to app links work?
Generated on 8/2/2024
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App-to-app links, also known as deep links, allow you to direct users to specific content within your app from external sources. Here are some key points on how they work, based on the content presented at WWDC:
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Universal Links: These links help people access your content whether or not they have your app installed. They can be used to open specific content within your app directly from a URL. For example, you can create a universal link that opens a specific trail in a trails app. This is done by expressing your app entities, enums, and intents as having a URL representation, which allows Siri and shortcuts to treat them like links to specific content (What’s new in App Intents).
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Deep Links in App Store Connect: Deep links can be used in custom product pages to enhance the user experience. When someone clicks on a deep link from a custom product page, they are directed to a specific location within your app. This can be particularly useful for marketing campaigns, as it allows you to create a seamless experience from the ad interaction to the place someone lands in your app (What’s new in App Store Connect).
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Integration with Shortcuts and Siri: You can use deep links with app intents to improve the flow of using your app. For instance, you can create an intent that deep links to a specific trail in your app when a shortcut is run. This can be done by adding support for URL representable entities and using the entity's identifier as an interpolated value in the URL (What’s new in App Intents).
Relevant Sessions
These sessions provide detailed insights into how you can implement and utilize deep links to enhance user experience and improve app discoverability.
What’s new in App Intents
Learn about improvements and all-new features with App Intents, and discover how this framework can help you expose your app’s functionality to Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, and more. We’ll show you how to make your entities more meaningful to the platform with the Transferable API, File Representations, new IntentFile APIs, and Spotlight Indexing, opening up powerful functionality in Siri and the Shortcuts app. Empower your intents to take people deep into your app with URL Representable Entities. Explore new techniques to model your entities and intents with new APIs for error handling and union values.
Design App Intents for system experiences
App Intents power system experiences in controls, Spotlight, Siri, and more. Find out how to identify the functionality that’s best for App Intents, and how to use parameters to make these intents flexible. Learn how to use App Intents to allow people to take action outside your app, and see examples of when to navigate into your app to show contextual information.
Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents
Learn the principles of the App Intents framework, like intents, entities, and queries, and how you can harness them to expose your app’s most important functionality right where people need it most. Find out how to build deep integration between your app and the many system features built on top of App Intents, including Siri, controls and widgets, Apple Pencil, Shortcuts, the Action button, and more. Get tips on how to build your App Intents integrations efficiently to create the best experiences in every surface while still sharing code and core functionality.
What’s new in App Store Connect
Explore new features for discovery, testing, and marketing. Find out how to nominate your apps for featuring on the App Store, share exciting moments (like a version launch) with marketing assets generated for you, deep link to specific content in your app from custom product pages, use the latest enhancements to TestFlight, and more.