It is my pleasure to announce support for “Deep Links” in our iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows apps. This means that if you click on a WorkFlowy link it will open automatically in the app instead of in your browser.
An example may be illustrative. If you subscribe to the Daily Update email then every day a plethora of links to different locations in your WorkFlowy show up in your inbox (You may not have realized because it looks like a beautifully WorkFlowy document but every bullet point in the email is a link). Previously, if you clicked on any of the bullet points it would open zoomed to that item in your browser. With Deep Links enabled, the link will instead open in the app if you have it installed.
If you are using the iOS or Android apps this should work automatically as of the next update. Both mobile operating systems have system-wide support for Deep Links which means that if you open a workflowy.com link anywhere on your phone it will take you directly to the app. On iOS this works via a technology called Universal Links, and on Android it is called App Links. It’s very slick and I think you will love it!
On the desktop it is a bit more complicated because native OS support is handled by protocol (e.g http://) rather than by domain (e.g workflowy.com). That means that unless you want every link starting with ‘https’ opening in WorkFlowy (trust me, you don’t), we can’t automatically handle any of them. What we have done is create a new workflowy:// protocol which is activated as part of installing or updating the desktop app.
For example, if you have embedded our Release Notes in your account, then if you click on the link workflowy://workflowy.com/#/eb2d662c4ba6 you will see a popup that looks like this
Click on ‘Open WorkFlowy’ and it will open directly to today’s release (again only if you have our Release Notes embedded in your account).
Now as you probably have figured out, none of the links out there in the world use the workflowy:// protocol. Therefore we have added an optional feature where whenever you open WorkFlowy in the browser, it will attempt to also open it in the app using the workflowy:// protocol.
There are three things you need to do to make Deep Links work on your desktop.
- Install the desktop app (or make sure you have the latest update). You may want to quit and reload the app for good measure.
- Log in to https://workflowy.com in your default browser because this only works if you are logged in.
- Go to ‘Settings’ and enable this feature:
At present, Deep Links are more experimental on desktop than on mobile (which is why it is optional) and therefore we would love to hear your feedback. Please let us know if you find it useful or annoying or buggy or life-changing.
PS – If you don’t use the WorkFlowy Desktop app I would strongly recommend giving it a try. Having a separate app in its own window that you can switch to using cmd/ctrl-tab is a game-changer rather than having it sit in a browser tab between 20 other things. Moreover, the desktop app doesn’t need to spend time loading if you have a large account and it remembers where you were when you quit it. It also works offline so you can use it on an airplane.