URL schemes of iOS apps

[cedhax]

In general, an iOS app can open another iOS app by its URL scheme, if exists, and asks it to perform various actions through its parameters. For example, a reader app (MapleRead, Marvin, etc.) may thus open a dictionary app with the word to be looked up. Or perhaps you want to look up the map of a place you read in a book. As http is also a scheme implying a web browser app, you may also specify a website URL instead. This is clearly very useful and easy to do, as long as you know the URL schemes with parameters.

While it is relatively easy to find out the parameters when the URL scheme is http or https, it is not easy to find them out otherwise, after I did some search today. There used to be a site, handleopenurl.com, maintaining a list of URL schemes of iOS apps. Unfortunately, the site was long dead. I'm wondering if anyone here is aware of another active site of this kind.

I'm expecting a list that looks like the following.

App Name -- URL Scheme
Google Maps -- comgooglemaps://?q=hawaii -- see also ref

Any other data point? Please post yours here.

Let's try to collect the data here. The data collected here should be "forever" around, not like what happened to handleopenurl.com.

----
P.S. Someone asked a similar question in another mobileread thread more than 3 years ago, and there really isn't much up-to-date information there IMHO.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by cedhax

Let's try to collect the data here. The data collected here should be "forever" around, not like what happened to handleopenurl.com.

An excellent idea.

Allow me to give an example of what you label relatively easy:

App Name -- URL Scheme

Google Translate--https://translate.google.com/#en/da/{word}

How did I find this?

Go to https://translate.google.com/

Then select your languages of interest. I chose English -> Danish
Then enter a word, say horse.
Observe the URL it will show : https://translate.google.com/#en/da/horse

Your URL Scheme will now be: https://translate.google.com/#en/da/{word}

In Marvin use {text} instead of {word}

[gabaldini]

The free dictionary thefreedictionary://search/{word}
Dictbox Dictbox://{word}
dictbox deutsch dictboxde://{word}
dictbox french dictboxfr://{word}
v-for-wiki v-for-wiki://search/_/{word}
wikipedia wikipedia://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{word}
Latin perseus digital http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l={word}&la=la

I'm trying to find the url of yandextranslate , with yandextranslate://es/{word}
only open the app.
it is easy to find the url scheme of an app in the ipa file, but is harder to find the parameters,some apps dont admit parameters ,so it is a great idea

You should probably create a Wiki page for this. MobileRead has a limited number of people but Wiki would be open to everyone. Bigger audience equals bigger response. Even if they make this into a sticky thread, it will wither on the vine at some point. MR has a lot of long outdated sticky threads.

[bookwormboy]

Merriam-Webster Dictionary -- mw-collegiate:
(Not sure about the parameters)
Twitter -- twitter://post?message={word}

[svenlind]

App Name -- URL Scheme

iTranslate -- itranslate://translate?from=auto&to=da&text={text}

Use {word} instead of {text} in MapleReader
The shown command will translate to Danish use to=en for English.

I have tried the free version of iTranslate, it has some quite aggressive commercials. In the paid version it is possible to have offline dictionaries for some language pairs.

[cedhax]

App Name -- URL Scheme

To open an http URL with the browser app Google Chrome instead of Safari, replace http by googlechrome, e.g.
Google Chrome -- googlechrome://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{text}

Similarly, for https replacement, e.g.
Google Chrome -- googlechromes://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{text}

[cedhax]

App Name -- URL Scheme

To open an http URL with the browser app Firefox instead of Safari, append
"firefox://open-url?url=" to the original URL, e.g.

firefox://open-url?url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{text}
firefox://open-url?url=https://www.google.com/search?q={text}

P.S. MapleRead (1.6.5) now uses "{text}" instead of "{word}".

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by gabaldini

...
it is easy to find the url scheme of an app in the ipa file, but is harder to find the parameters,some apps dont admit parameters ,so it is a great idea

The new option Implicit Copy in the More menu of MapleRead is definitely helpful when the external app has only a known URL scheme but unknown parameters.

Originally Posted by bookwormboy

Merriam-Webster Dictionary -- mw-collegiate:
(Not sure about the parameters)
...

For example, just enter "mw-collegiate://{text}".

As quoted from a FAQ:

For example, the URL scheme (or one of the URL schemes) of “Merriam-Webster Dictionary” app is “mw-collegiate”, but its proper URL is unknown. To work around the syntax check, enter mw-collegiate://{text}. The catch is that you will then have to manually paste the text into some search bar of the dictionary app when opened. Remember to turn on Implicit Copy in the More menu, so that the selected text is automatically copied to the shared system pasteboard as a side effect of executing such command.