UIWebView open links in Safari

Question

I have a very simple UIWebView with content from my application bundle. I would like any links in the web view to open in Safari instead of in the web view. Is this possible?

Answer 1

If anyone wonders, Drawnonward's solution would look like this in Swift:

func webView(webView: UIWebView!, shouldStartLoadWithRequest request: NSURLRequest!, navigationType: UIWebViewNavigationType) -> Bool {
    if navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.LinkClicked {
        UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(request.URL)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

Answer 2

Add this to the UIWebView delegate:

(edited to check for navigation type. you could also pass through file:// requests which would be relative links)

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
    if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked ) {
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[request URL]];
        return NO;
    }

    return YES;
}

Swift Version:

func webView(webView: UIWebView, shouldStartLoadWithRequest request: NSURLRequest, navigationType: UIWebViewNavigationType) -> Bool {
        if navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.LinkClicked {
            UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(request.URL!)
            return false
        }
        return true
    }

Swift 3 version:

func webView(_ webView: UIWebView, shouldStartLoadWith request: URLRequest, navigationType: UIWebViewNavigationType) -> Bool {
    if navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.linkClicked {
        UIApplication.shared.openURL(request.url!)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

Update

As openURL has been deprecated in iOS 10:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
        if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked ) {
            UIApplication *application = [UIApplication sharedApplication];
            [application openURL:[request URL] options:@{} completionHandler:nil];
            return NO;
        }

        return YES;
}

Answer 3

Here's the Xamarin iOS equivalent of drawnonward's answer.

class WebviewDelegate : UIWebViewDelegate {
    public override bool ShouldStartLoad (UIWebView webView, NSUrlRequest request, UIWebViewNavigationType navigationType) {
        if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.LinkClicked) {
            UIApplication.SharedApplication.OpenUrl (request.Url);
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Answer 4

In my case I want to make sure that absolutely everything in the web view opens Safari except the initial load and so I use...

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)inWeb shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)inRequest navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)inType {
     if(inType != UIWebViewNavigationTypeOther) {
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[inRequest URL]];
        return NO;
     }
     return YES;
}

Answer 5

In Swift you can use the following code:

extension YourViewController : UIWebViewDelegate {
    func webView(webView: UIWebView, shouldStartLoadWithRequest request: NSURLRequest, navigationType: UIWebViewNavigationType) -> Bool {
        if let url = request.URL where navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.LinkClicked {
            UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(url)
            return false
        }
        return true
    }
}

Make sure you check for the URL value and the navigationType.

Answer 6

One quick comment to user306253's answer: caution with this, when you try to load something in the UIWebView yourself (i.e. even from the code), this method will prevent it to happened.

What you can do to prevent this (thanks Wade) is:

if (inType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[inRequest URL]];
    return NO;
}

return YES;

You might also want to handle the UIWebViewNavigationTypeFormSubmitted and UIWebViewNavigationTypeFormResubmitted types.