Deep links

import { Component, DestroyRef, inject } from '@angular/core';
import { DeepLinks } from '@ng-native/device';

@Component({ selector: 'app-root', template: `<view />` })
export class Root {
  constructor() {
    const links = inject(DeepLinks);
    const path = links.initialUrl();
    if (path) this.navigate(path);

    const stop = links.subscribe((next) => this.navigate(next));
    inject(DestroyRef).onDestroy(stop);
  }

  private navigate(path: string): void {}
}

myapp://settings and https://example.com/settings both mean /settings to a router, which takes noticing that only the second one has a host to strip - a scheme's own prefix is app configuration and every app's is different, but stripping one down to a path is not.

It also strips Expo Go's own /--/ launch prefix and ignores the development client's internal launch url (<scheme>://expo-development-client/?url=...), which is Expo telling its own launcher which bundle to load and means nothing to the app - left alone it would reach the router as a path, match no route, and show a blank screen on every launch during development, which looks exactly like a bug in the app.

The launch url is delivered whichever way is true at the time: as initialUrl() if it is known before anything asks, and through subscribe() if the app is already up. Both happen - the promise that resolves initialUrl() races the first navigation and neither order is guaranteed - so call initialUrl() and subscribe() both, as above, rather than picking one.

open(url) hands a url to whatever else on the device handles it: a browser, Maps, another app.

@ng-native/router's provideNativeRouter(routes) wires this into PlatformLocation for you, so most apps never call DeepLinks directly.

Off a device and on the web

Off a device initialUrl() stays null and subscribe() never fires, because there is no Linking module underneath it. On the web, urls and paths are already the same idea, so DeepLinks is a native-only concern - a web build reads the address bar instead.

Reference