Apple's documentation on custom URL schemes:.Great javascript widget for prompting the user to hit 'Add to homescreen' once in Safari:.Another stack overflow question describing the process:.Great example of how the web-service works with a live demo:.Here's a list of resources on the topic that helped me out (Sorry, I don't have enough reputation to include more than 2 links. Var dataURI = 'data:text/html charset=UTF-8,' + html Var html = document.getElementById('html').innerHTML Var ev = document.createEvent('MouseEvents') Р”Вocument.write('Valet Add this page to your homescreen ') Var e = document.getElementById('redirectURL') Here's a sample of how my html looked for the service:

If it was, then it should take you to your app, otherwise it should present you with a page where the user can save the page to the homescreen. The encode page will need to detect if the page was launched in standalone mode.

Your webserver will need to display a page which returns another page in an base64 encoded format so that the user can use the shortcut after the webserver stops running (obviously you can't leave the embedded server running 24/7). If you're using objective-c theres CocoaHTTP and if you're using Swift I'd recommend Swifter, which is what I used. For embeded servers theres some great fairly easy to use options.

To create this webservice you can either host it remotely,which will require your user to be online to use, or embed one into your app, which is what Workflow and Facebook Groups does.

So to circumvent this issue you'll need to host a web-service somewhere that takes your URL and returns a base64 URL which your user can save to the homescreen. The trick is, you can't just send your URL to Safari and save it because doing so will cause Safari to immediately follow the link and the user will never have a chance to hit 'Add to homescreen'. So what we want to do is use Safari to save our custom URLs that lead to our app to the springboard. The only way currently to add a shortcut to the iOS springboard is via Safari's 'add to homescreen' function. Create dynamic URL links that, when followed, lead to content you wish to shortcut to.

The answer provided by is essentially correct. Given that Workflow is now an Apple app, it doesn't look like Apple has any issues with using this technique either. This is becoming an increasingly popular feature and is used in major apps like Workflow and Facebook's Groups app. I spent a good while trying to implement this functionality into an app recently and wanted to put out some of the resources I found on the subject to save someone else a major headache.

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