New Bug Encountered: Opening Google Photo's URL on Android devices errors

Adml
Participant II

As of this morning, URL’s to Google photo’s invoked from an AppSheet App on Android are not loading and display the following error message.

Web page not available
The web page at https://photos.app.goo.gl/px3FagddLqvvhZKt5 could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_UNKNOWN_URL_SCHEME

To load the page the URL needs to be copied from AppSheet into the native browser.

The problem does not occur on IOS.

Tested on several Android phones including Oppo and Samsung Galaxy. Tested on different Apps for different URL’s and only appears to error for Google photo’s. Testing links to non-Google websites and Google services such as Google Drive work fine.

0 9 3,778
9 REPLIES 9

Steve
Participant V

Yes Steve, thank you. Still working for the time being though soon to be added to the scrapheap

Hi @Adam_Lawton,
Try turning on Lunch External option for that URL column.
I suspect this happens because Google is detecting the device has the Google Photos app installed and tries to open the link in Google Photos, but it’s not being handled well from within AppSheet.

Hi @Gil,

That will work no doubt.

It will however mess with the users experience in the App they all use Android devices and built Google Photo’s into the workflow. This was working 48 hours ago - so something has changed. Either Android across different manufacturers simultaneously or AppSheet?

Eitherway, as @Steve Steve Coile pointed out, the URL uses Google URL’s shortening service which will cease to exist shortly so the company that uses the App will need to modify their process.

And @Gil, if I can be a bit cheeky and say that I will definitely implement “Lunch External” today,sounds like a good option

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

@Adam_Lawton,
I’m not aware of anything that changed on our side.
What was the behavior 48 hours ago? Did it open the Google Photos app? Or did it just load the site inside AppSheet?

@Gil

Yes, invoked the photo’s app. This recent post from the community is for the same issue with whatsapp as the target application.

So from this side of the fence it appears a change in AppSheet. Either way the customer impacted by this implemented the work around.

Hi @Adam_Lawton,
You’re actually right, it was a change on our side, but it was released about 3 or 4 weeks ago (app version 13.2).
This change was meant to keep urls that are not marked as “Launch externally” to open within the app. Unfortunately urls that opens another app (Photos, Whatsapp, etc…) won’t work this way.

Thanks for the update @Gil

This error is appeared because the WebView can’t recognize the URL Scheme,for example, the WebView will usually recognize only http and https, anything other than these. So WebView cannot parse it to right place, we should use intent to redirect the url. for example – intent://,market://,app://,mail:// etc will not be recognized by webview unless we add a handler to handle these url scheme or by disabling these schemes and only load http and https schemes.

This error has no any specific solution till now. Android user and PC user all are facing this error which needs to be sought out. There’s a long-standing bug in Chromium regarding how links without protocols are handled. It occasionally is patched, but seems to keep resurfacing. In some cases, prefixing your links with http:// (or https://) should resolve the issue for you.

Also, in some cases, try to add target="_blank" in your URL Scheme/Code. for example:

<a href="mailto:my@email.com" target="_blank">Link Text</a>

Top Labels in this Space