DeepLinks broken on Snapchat

Bug Reports Roblox Application and Website Bugs
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Hi, we often use DeepLinks in Clip It, where users share clips with each other.

We’ve seen some huge improvements in how reliable they’ve become - thank you so much to the team that has helped to make this a reality! We do still see some odd behavior though. Some of it may not be within Roblox’s control, but I’d love to double check.

We see that some apps, such as Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. have their own browsers that links are opened in. In one case that we’ve found so far - this prevents the app from automatically opening and showing the user their content. Is it possible to fix this?

Here is a link to a neon-background clip I made on my alt account. This works fine and shows the clip properly if not opened from Snapchat chats: Roblox

However if you try to send this to someone in a snapchat chat, or use Roblox’s iOS Share modal then tap on Snapchat and send it that way, you experience the in-app browser flow which breaks the deeplinking/auto app open experience. Here are the apps I’ve tested so far.

Tested on iOS:

  • Twitter :white_check_mark: Deeplink auto app open, auto game-play, data loading works!
  • Discord :white_check_mark: Deeplink auto app open, auto game-play, data loading works!
  • Messages :white_check_mark: Deeplink auto app open, auto game-play, data loading works!
  • Instagram :white_check_mark: Deeplink auto app open, auto game-play, data loading works! :orange_circle: (The first time you tap a deeplink that someone has DM’d you - Instagram opens it in its own browser, then it opens an iOS popup to ask if you’d like to open the Roblox app, which then works correctly)
  • Snapchat: :stop_sign: Deeplink does not work. It will do one of three things for me:
    • Opens the snapchat web browser, shows a blank page with a JSON-looking error that says I’m sending too many requests
    • Open the App Store to the Roblox app page
    • Opens the snapchat web browser, shows the Roblox login page
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Hey Genya!

How’s it goin’ :smiley:? I’ve been lookin’ into this issue for the last couple o’ days, and whilst I haven’t found a concrete cause/solution, I just wanted to give you a quick update.

My general impression from reading docs and googling is that: Snapchat isn’t quite as deeplink-friendly as many other apps. :sad:

I’ve tried accessing deeplinks to YT videos, other experience pages, reddit threads, Pinterest images, Discord channels etc… and it appears whilst other platforms (messenger, insta etc…) can automatically redirect/handle, Snapchat didn’t (just as you’d observed with Clip-it link shares).

I’m still looking into the causes behind it, if there’s a solution or workaround. Hopefully I’ll get back to you later this week!

Cheers,
TGSamaritan

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I’m so happy to see the support from Roblox on this! Thank you so much for looking into it.

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Okay, so as a quick update:

Unfortunately, it’s all but confirmed that Snapchat’s just more strict with deeplink handling, which means the generally desired behaviour of “Deeplink auto app open, auto game-play, data loading works” is not likely to happen unless Snapchat implements Roblox-specific support or enhancing their deeplink handling policy :frowning:. I’ll see if we have some way we can reach out to Snap, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

That being said, I believe there’s stuff we can (probably) do for Roblox, I’m still lookin’ into it. I will talk with some of our other internal teams early next week and keep ya posted! No promises, but I’ll do the best that I can!

Cheers,
TGSamaritan

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You are an absolute legend. Thank you so much for the massive amount of effort here! Cautiously crossing my fingers!