@nativescript/app-availability

A plugin to check for availability of other apps on the device.

npm install @nativescript/appavailability

Usage

Version 1.3.0 added a synchronous version of this method that doesn’t return a Promise. Need that? Use availableSync instead of available.

TypeScript

import { available } from '@nativescript/appavailability'

// examples of what to pass:
// - for iOS: "maps://", "twitter://", "fb://"
// - for Android: "com.facebook.katana"
available('twitter://').then((avail: boolean) => {
  console.log('App available? ' + avail)
})

TypeScript + Angular

import * as appavailability from '@nativescript/appavailability'

// examples of what to pass:
// - for iOS: "maps://", "twitter://", "fb://"
// - for Android: "com.facebook.katana"
appavailability.available('twitter://').then((avail: boolean) => {
  console.log('App available? ' + avail)
})

JavaScript

var appAvailability = require('@nativescript/appavailability')

// examples of what to pass:
// - for iOS: "maps://", "twitter://", "fb://"
// - for Android: "com.facebook.katana"
appAvailability.available('com.facebook.katana').then(function (avail) {
  console.log('App available? ' + avail)
})

Opening an app (with web fallback)

Now that you know whether an app is installed or not, you probably want to launch it. Here’s a snippet that opens the mobile Twitter app and falls back to the website if it’s not installed.

import { available } from '@nativescript/appavailability'
import { Utils } from '@nativescript/core'

const twitterScheme = 'twitter://'
available(twitterScheme).then(available => {
  if (available) {
    // open in the app
    Utils.openUrl(
      twitterScheme + (isIOS ? '/user?screen_name=' : 'user?user_id=') + 'eddyverbruggen'
    )
  } else {
    // open in the default browser
    Utils.openUrl('https://twitter.com/eddyverbruggen')
  }
})

And a more concise, synchronous way would be:

import { availableSync } from '@nativescript/appavailability'
import { Utils } from '@nativescript/core'

if (availableSync('twitter://')) {
  Utils.openUrl(
    'twitter://' + (isIOS ? '/user?screen_name=' : 'user?user_id=') + 'eddyverbruggen'
  )
} else {
  Utils.openUrl('https://twitter.com/eddyverbruggen')
}

iOS Whitelisting

To get useful results on iOS 9 and up, you need to whitelist the URL Scheme you’re querying in the application’s .plist.

Luckily, NativeScript made this pretty easy. Just open app/App_ResourcesiOS/Info.plist and add this if you want to query for both twitter:// and fb://:

  <key>LSApplicationQueriesSchemes</key>
  <array>
    <string>fb</string>
    <string>twitter</string>
  </array>

You may wonder how one would determine the correct identifier for an app.

  • Android: simply search the Play Store and use the id in the URL. For Twitter, this is com.twitter.android because the URL is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twitter.android.

  • iOS: this one is a bit harder but this site should cover most apps you’re interested in. When, in doubt, you can always fire up Safari on your iPhone and type, for example, 'twitter://' in the address bar, if the app launches you’re good.

License

Apache License Version 2.0