“Open in App” doesn’t work

When I try to play a game via Roblox’s mobile website, I am asked to open it in the app like normal. When I press that, I am taken to the App Store instead of to the game on Roblox, even if I already have the app installed. I would expect “Open in App” to open the game I was trying to play in the app.

I’m using iOS 13 on an iPhone 8 and have the latest version of the Roblox app installed. Thanks :slight_smile:

20 Likes

This is a very frustrating bug. Adds a several minute opportunity cost to testing unreleased games live on mobile devices.

6 Likes

I’ve been experiencing this issue as well for the past week on my iPad 6th gen and iPhone 7 both running IOS 13.3

3 Likes

I can reproduce it on an iPhone XR w/ iOS 13.3 as well as on a 5th Gen iPad with iOS 13.3. I’ll also add that when it throws me into the App Store, I can’t really rejoin from the app because I get the “You’re on a different device” error.

2 Likes

I can confirm that this occurs to me as well on my iPhone 7 which is upgraded to the (IOS 13.3.1). Any game which I attempt to launch in Safari takes me down to the App Store instead of the game I wanted to play.

However, I believe this was reported before which takes you to the “App Store”.

2 Likes

I have iOS 13, iPhone 8, and the latest version of ROBLOX installed and I to have this bug. It is especially frustrating if you want to join a private server on mobile.

1 Like

I’ve noticed this happens in several apps, actually. For example, Reddit. What I did was open Reddit first, then go back to the Open in App page, and it seemed to work. Whether or not it works for Roblox, I’m not sure, but it may be similar in concept.

1 Like

From what I can tell, this is a scheme issue. Right now, Roblox uses the URL scheme:
robloxmobile://placeID=************
(Example: robloxmobile://placeID=3540454961)
This URL scheme causes a number of problems including:

Sideways App

You have already joined this place on another device

This one is hard to repo, I’ll post a screenshot if I can get it to happen again. It generally occurs whenever you try to join the game from the web multiple times over the span of a few minutes.

And the infamous opening of the App Store

I go into much more detail here:

Roblox website on Safari opens both Roblox and the App Store

However, I believe that a solution could be to use the URL scheme roblox://placeId (e.g. roblox://3540454961) I have used this in QR codes and manually through Safari too, and it works fine every time.

Wondering what a URL scheme is?

A URL scheme (in mobile development terms) is like a URL but for an app. It serves as a bridge between the website and the app. Apple has a pretty good overview here: Apple Developer Documentation

2 Likes

I can second this. If someone sends a link, it will say “open in Roblox”. I will then click okay and it will open Roblox for about a tenth of a second and then it will immediately move to the AppStore under the roblox section. It is extremely frustrating especially when trying to view people’s places on mobile, but without it being simple to do so.

For me, it opens the Roblox app but never automatically plays the game or even opens the game details page.

This was a pretty informative reply as I’ve never heard of URL schemes. I didn’t realize all those issues could be traced back to a URL!

3 Likes

This may not be 100% related to this topic since there’s no “Open in App” on Chrome anymore, joining games doesn’t work most of the time. It doesn’t give you the “you’re playing on a different device” error but the game basically crashes. I tried joining a baseplate game and it wouldn’t let me.

Here’s a video on both of the behaviors.

2 Likes

Sorry for reviving the topic, but this is an issue that still persists and needs to be fixed.

For those who are asking why I am using mobile’s website instead of the app, it is because when I try playing someone’s creation on the DevForum, it will not let me play even the mobile-suitable experiences. It is a huge annoyance, and severely limits when I do not have access to a computer.

Quite a major bug, and I would be surprised if Roblox has not noticed this.