Deep links are hyperlinks that take a user to a specific location within an application rather than a website. When a user selects a deep link, the application opens at the designated location, such as a specific scene in a Unity application. Unity uses the Application.absoluteURL property and Application.deepLinkActivated event to support deep linking.
Before you can process deep links, you need to configure your application to react to them. The process to configure an application to react to specific URLs is platform-specific. Unity supports deep links for the following platforms:
There are two ways to process a deep link that depend on the current state of the application:
In both cases, use Application.absoluteURL to select the scene to open in the application.
The following code sample shows you how to process a deep link depending on the current state of the application:
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;
public class ProcessDeepLinkMngr : MonoBehaviour
{
public static ProcessDeepLinkMngr Instance { get; private set; }
public string deeplinkURL;
private void Awake()
{
if (Instance == null)
{
Instance = this;
Application.deepLinkActivated += onDeepLinkActivated;
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Application.absoluteURL))
{
// Cold start and Application.absoluteURL not null so process Deep Link.
onDeepLinkActivated(Application.absoluteURL);
}
// Initialize DeepLink Manager global variable.
else deeplinkURL = "[none]";
DontDestroyOnLoad(gameObject);
}
else
{
Destroy(gameObject);
}
}
private void onDeepLinkActivated(string url)
{
// Update DeepLink Manager global variable, so URL can be accessed from anywhere.
deeplinkURL = url;
// Decode the URL to determine action.
// In this example, the application expects a link formatted like this:
// unitydl://mylink?scene1
string sceneName = url.Split('?')[1];
bool validScene;
switch (sceneName)
{
case "scene1":
validScene = true;
break;
case "scene2":
validScene = true;
break;
default:
validScene = false;
break;
}
if (validScene) SceneManager.LoadScene(sceneName);
}
}
To test a deep link, use the following steps:
This is an example HTML file that you can use to test deep links. To redirect the link, change the href
attribute in one of the <a>
elements.
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
</head>
<body >
<h1>My Deep Link Test page</h1>
<p><a href="unitydl://mylink">Launch</a></p>
<p><a href="unitydl://mylink?parameter">Launch with Parameter</a></p>
</body>
</html>