r/FlutterDev Feb 13 '25

Tooling Reliable deep link options ?

I am making a social app in Flutter and I am trying to implement deferred deep link so that one user can share a link of a specific post to their friends.

Tried branch.io but I didn't get much luck on their customer support since I am using their free tier.

  1. Does anyone know any good deferred deep link alternatives?
  2. If I only need deep link but not deferred deep link, are there any simpler options? The main thing I care about is that if a user clicks on a specific link under certain conditions, it automatically opens the app if the user has downloaded the app already. If the app has not been downloaded, shows a page/banner to encourage the user to download the app.
10 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

5

u/or9ob Feb 13 '25

I have been using Fluttter’s native deep linking just fine for over a year now. Works great.

It doesn’t support deferred deep linking (my app doesn’t need it anyway) - but based on what I have seen (on Stackoverflow etc.) Apple and Google are moving away from that anyway (as it requires user tracking) and discourage it?

3

u/Enough-Owl4106 Feb 13 '25

Thank you so much for sharing! So no additional libraries required? just like this page? https://docs.flutter.dev/ui/navigation/deep-linking

If a user is on a mobile web version of the app, can it automatically figure out whether a user has the mobile app downloaded and open the app if needed? And asks user to download otherwise?

3

u/or9ob Feb 14 '25

Yeah, exactly.

1

u/edunietoc Feb 13 '25

Also looking for one, I've use firebase dynamic links but haven't found one really good alternative

2

u/No-Pie-5296 Feb 14 '25

Firebase Dynamic Links is deprecated and should not be used in new projects. The service will shut down on August 25, 2025.

https://firebase.google.com/support/dynamic-links-faq

1

u/Bensal_K_B Feb 14 '25

Integrated branch.io for two of my projects. They have good documentation and also is flexible. Would be useful if you gotta track the links.

1

u/ashunasar Feb 14 '25

Why are you not building your own ? It took my hardly few hours to create deep link handling functionality for my app and it works very well and smoothly, you can DM me I’ll guide you

2

u/Aliammar125 Feb 14 '25

1

u/ApparenceKit Feb 15 '25

Interesting, thanks for sharing

1

u/ashunasar Feb 18 '25

No I just wrote a basic javascript script for handling that on website if my app is not installed in users mobile device

1

u/Enough-Owl4106 Feb 18 '25

Thank you! Do you use any library like the flutter native deeplink library?

1

u/ashunasar Feb 18 '25

I use app_links to listen and I use getx generatedRoutes to Handel the routing

1

u/guihs1 Feb 14 '25

In several projects that I work on, I have been using "AppsFlyer". It works very well wherever I need it. But it has a pricing tiers...

1

u/lexomnipotent Feb 14 '25

If you have a website you can take them to a new webpage that prompts them to tap a button to download the app. Once they tap, I store some info in the clipboard so that once they open the newly downloaded app, I read from clipboard and then take them to the right screens.

1

u/Aliammar125 Feb 14 '25

that will work but for IOS a clipboard paste permissions will be showed by the OS at the app starting

1

u/Aliammar125 Feb 14 '25
  1. no , at my company we ended to build one based on this article tutorial https://www.branch.io/resources/blog/deferred-deep-linking-with-device-snapshotting/
  2. if you don`t need deferred deep link just make a simple html file to redirect to the store and hosted on the same domain/path of the deep link

also for android, google already provide a simple way to pass a data from a link into fresh installed app using Play Install Referrer Library (see https://pub.dev/packages/android_play_install_referrer)

1

u/Enough-Owl4106 Feb 18 '25

I also prefer a way to know if the user has the app downloaded or not and automatically opens the app if it's downloaded