How to use external browser on web view Android app

Question

I convert WordPress website to android app, in my website lots of external links i need to open external links browser like telegram, in telegram all external links open in external browser in the app

Answer 1

As @peshkira has given a good solution, but I would suggest to use CustomTab.

With Custom Tabs you can get instance of browser without creating a web view. As it provide navigation awareness, the browser delivers a callback to the application upon an external navigation. You can modify and update following -

Custom menu

Color of the address bar

Custom action button

Custom enter and exit animations

Setup for CustomTab -

dependencies {
    ...
    implementation "androidx.browser:browser:1.2.0"
}

In your code, Open a CustomTab -

String url = ¨https://paul.kinlan.me/¨;
CustomTabsIntent.Builder builder = new CustomTabsIntent.Builder();
CustomTabsIntent customTabsIntent = builder.build();
customTabsIntent.launchUrl(this, Uri.parse(url));

You can save up to 700 ms when opening a link with the Custom Tabs by connecting to the service and pre-loading the browser.

Most browser do support CustomTab like Chrome, Samsung Mobile Broswer, Microsoft Edge etc. Please follow Custom Tabs Best Practices. Here is a gitHub example.

---

Edit

As you mentioned in your comment "every post have 1 external link", then you following options -

1. Create a WebView to open link
2. Use intent to open device external browser
3. Use CustomTab to open instance of browser

I think behavior of all three is very well explained via this gif.

Now, to show all the posts in your app, I believe you are using a RecycleView, so you can decide from three choices, you can listen for click on one of the post by using a click listener on that post, something like follows -

postItem.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View v) {
        handleClickOnLink(postUrl);
    }
});

Now in the body of your method handleClickOnLink(String postUrl) you can use your code to decide how you want open the link.

As I have mentioned above, Using CustomTab will be one of the choices, which I think will be a good option in this case, so you can have an implementation of method as follows -

public void handleClickOnLink(String postUrl){
    CustomTabsIntent.Builder builder = new CustomTabsIntent.Builder();

    //setting toolbar color 
    builder.setToolbarColor(getContext().getColor(R.color.colorPrimaryDark));
    //can be more modification as builer.setTitle() and more

    CustomTabsIntent customTabsIntent = builder.build();
    customTabsIntent.launchUrl(getContext(), Uri.parse(postUrl));
}

If there is a device with a browser which doesn't support CustomTab then device default browser will be open.

Result will be something as follows -

Happy Coding !

Answer 2

You can add a WebViewClient to your webview and override the shouldOverrideUrlLoading method. This will give you a callback when a link is clicked and you can inspect the url and decide if you want to open in the webview or open it in the external browser.

For example something like:

private class MyCustomWebClient : WebViewClient() {

        @TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.N)
        override fun shouldOverrideUrlLoading(
            view: WebView?,
            request: WebResourceRequest?
        ) = if (interceptUrlLoading(request?.url?.toString())) {
            true
        } else {
            super.shouldOverrideUrlLoading(view, request)
        }

        override fun shouldOverrideUrlLoading(view: WebView?, url: String?): Boolean =
            if (interceptUrlLoading(url)) {
                true
            } else {
                super.shouldOverrideUrlLoading(view, url)
            }

        private fun interceptUrlLoading(url: String?): Boolean {
            return if (url.equals("telegram url ...")) {
                startActivity(Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url))) 
                true
            } else {
               false
            }
        }
}

Answer 3

Problem SOlved guys thanks for your replays

Source (from sven)

webView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient(){
public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
    if (url != null && (url.startsWith("http://") || url.startsWith("https://"))) {
        view.getContext().startActivity(
            new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url)));
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

});