Xamarin Form WebView different behavior between Android and iOS when navigating to link from local html content

Question

When opening a link to a website from my WebView both with Android and iOS I'm able to do it with the default browser of the phone. However, when going back to the app, with Android I see the expected and desired behavior of seeing the original WebView page, instead on iOS I see the opened website inside the application. Here the GitHub link to reproduce the behavior: https://github.com/irdalan/WebViewTestApp

Behavior for Android: From left to right:

AndroidApp before clicking on the link 2. Navigating to link with default browser on Android 3. AndroidApp after going back from browser to App.

Behavior for iOS: From left to right:

IphoneApp before clicking on the link 5. Navigating to link with default browser on iOS 6. IphoneApp after going back from browser to App.

EDIT: Code behind of webview page

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Xamarin.Essentials;
using Xamarin.Forms;

namespace WebViewTestApp
{
    public partial class MainPage : ContentPage
    {
        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            HtmlWebViewSource localhtml = new HtmlWebViewSource();


            string text = "<html><body><h1>Xamarin.Forms</h1><p>Welcome to WebView.<a href= \"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xamarin\">Xamarin</a></p></body></html>";

           
            localhtml.Html = text.Replace(@"\", string.Empty);
            _webview.Source = localhtml;
            _webview.Navigating += async (s, e) =>
            {
                if (e.Url.StartsWith("http"))
                {
                    try
                    {
                        var uri = new Uri(e.Url);
                        await Launcher.OpenAsync(uri);
                    }
                    catch (Exception ex)
                    {

                    }
                    finally
                    {
                        e.Cancel = true;
                    }

                }
            };
        }
    }
}

Its great that you have a link to a repo! But please also add the most relevant code directly in the question. This ensures that the question is self-contained (links can break over the years), and makes it easier to zero-in on the most important code. — ToolmakerSteve
– ToolmakerSteve, Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 16:21

ToolmakerSteve · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-13 16:39:26Z

1

Try delaying the Launcher call, so that Cancel of Navigating happens before switch to browser happens. This should suppress the default behavior, which is what displayed the web page w/i webview itself.

Change:

await Launcher.OpenASync(uri);

To:

Device.BeginInvokeOnMainThread(async () =>
    await Launcher.OpenAsync(uri));

OPTIONAL:

To make it clear that you want Cancel to happen first, you could move e.Cancel = true; before the Launcher line. However, this isn't strictly necessary: what's inside BeginInvoke won't get executed until your Navigating method returns.

answered Apr 13, 2022 at 16:39

ToolmakerSteve

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