Disable Twitter Universal Deep Links

Question

Update: It appears Twitter has fixed this issue. Clicking the authorize button now works! Thank you all for the responses.

I have a UIWebView that opens and directs to Twitters Oauth/Authorize webpage. The user signs in with there Twitter details and authenticates the use of our application with there Twitter account. This process worked perfect before the release of Twitter 6.37 iOS application. What happens now is when the WebView detects https://twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token instead of staying in the WebView it opens the native Twitter application and dies. If you uninstall the Twitter application everything works as usually it staying within the WebView. How can I prevent this from happening? I want to stay within my UIWebView and not automatically open deep links. I have been reading about the new URL deep link changes in iOS 9, but not sure of how to stop them from my application to other native applications. Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

I ran into this issue as well and figured out it was because my authorize endpoint was set to https://twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token="+oauthToken (I believe this was in the original documentation). If you add api as the subdomain: https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token="+oauthToken, it will no longer trigger the deep linking and load the twitter app.

Answer 2

As a workaround, in twitter authentication screen we can use the Go button on iOS typing keypad instead of using the sign in button on web view until twitter fixes. Please refer the attached screenshot link for clarity.

Screenshot for the workaround

Answer 3

My answer to this via a Xamarin question:

Unless Twitter removes/updates the apps section of "https://www.twitter.com/apple-app-site-association" to allow a bypass or a secondary oauth that is not in the apple-app-site-association file I do not see how you would do it. These files are signed and iOS handles them at an OS level.

I have not played around very much with the continueUserActivity delegate and the NSUserActivity object that is passed to apps launched from UNI links, but I do not see a way for the launched app (i.e. Twitter) to return control to the original app, and at that point the oauth call-chain would be broken anyway....

• Unique. Unlike custom URL schemes, universal links can’t be claimed by other apps, because they use standard HTTP or HTTPS links to your website.

• Secure. When users install your app, iOS checks a file that you’ve uploaded to your web server to make sure that your website allows your app to open URLs on its behalf. Only you can create and upload this file, so the association of your website with your app is secure.

Via: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html

I would report as an issue (bug?) to Twitter's Dev forum: https://twittercommunity.com