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Developer Noon
Developer Noon

Posted on • Originally published at developernoon.com

What Is the Difference Between Deep Links and App Links?

An App Link is a deep link based on your website URL that has been validated to belong to your website, whereas a deep link is an intent filter system that allows users to immediately access a certain activity in an Android app. When a user clicks on that URL, your app will launch.

Here is a more detailed explanation of each of these topics, with real-life examples:

What is Deep Links?

Deep links are a navigational concept that allows users to move between the web and apps. They are essentially URLs that route visitors to specific information in applications.

What is App Links?

App Links, commonly known as Android App Links, enable an app to declare itself the default handler of an application domain or URL. Unfortunately, it is only compatible with Android versions 6.0 (API level 23) and higher.

Deep Links Used for App Content

When a user clicks a URL, the Android system tries each of the steps below in succession until the request is successful:

  1. If one is specified, open the user's favorite app that can handle the URI.
  2. Open the only program that can deal with the URI.
  3. Allow the user to choose an app from a drop-down menu.

I hope you can now understand the difference between a deep link and an app link.

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