Today App Extension Widget Tap To Open Containing App

Daniel Storm picture Daniel Storm · Jun 3, 2014 · Viewed 40.2k times · Source

I've implemented a Today widget for my application +Quotes which displays the day's quote within the notification center with the help of these Apple Docs. What I'd like to accomplish is opening the Containing App, in this case +Quotes, when the user taps the +Quotes widget within their Today notification view, not entirely sure what to call this, as Calendar would if you tapped it in the Today view. I've tried overlaying a button over the label which would call -(void)openURL:(NSURL *)URL completionHandler:(void (^)(BOOL success))completionHandler upon it being tapped, then open the Custom URL Scheme I have declared to open the Containing App. The issue is it doesn't open the Containing App.

+Quotes Today App Extension Widget

-(IBAction)myButton:(id)sender {
    NSURL *customURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"PositiveQuotes://"];
    [self openURL:customURL completionHandler:nil];
}

Answer

sunseeker picture sunseeker · Jun 4, 2014

EDIT: Ok, just a little correction here. I got it working with placing a button over the label just like suggested above and the following code:

- (IBAction) goToApp: (id)sender { 
    NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"floblog://"];
    [self.extensionContext openURL:url completionHandler:nil]; 
  }

I linked it to a "Touch Up Inside" event. However, this also causes the app to launch when the user scrolls the Today view.

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I ran into the same issue. However, it seems that there is no solution for now since the release notes for the first beta of iOS 8 mention:

Known Issues: openURL does not work from an extension.

So I guess we will at least have to wait until beta 2.