Testing Local Experience for App Clip Not Working

Question

Created Sep ’20

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I am trying to follow the guidance for testing a Local Experience, as listed in the Testing Your App Clip’s Launch Experience documentation. I have successfully created my App Clip target, and can confirm that running the App Clip on my device does launch the App Clip app as I expected. Further, I can successfully test the App Clip on device, by setting the _XCAppClipURL argument in the App Clip's scheme.

I would like to test a Local Experience. The documentation states that for testing Local Experiences;

To test your app clip’s invocation with a local experience, you don’t need to add the Associated Domains Entitlement, make changes to the Apple App Site Association file on your web server, or create an app clip experience for testing in TestFlight.

Therefore, I should be able to configure a Local Experience with any desired domain in Settings -> Developer -> Local Experience, generate a QR code or NFC tag with that same URL, and the App Clip experience should appear. I have taken the following steps;

Built and run my App Clip on my local device.
In Settings -> Developer -> Local Experience, I have registered a new experience using a URL prefix https://somewebsite.com
Set my Bundle ID to com.mycompany.myapp.Clip, which exactly matches the Bundle Identifier, as listed in Xcode, under my App Clip target.
Generated a QR code which directs me to https://somewebsite.com

In theory, I believe I should be able to open the Camera app on my device, point the camera at the QR code, and the App Clip experience should appear. However, I received mixed experiences. 50% of the time, I receive a pop-up directing me to open https://somewebsite.com in Safari, the other 50% of the time, no banner or action occurs whatsoever.

Is this an issue anyone has faced before, or have I pursued these steps out of order?

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Answer 1

rynning OP

Sep ’20

Have you tried adding/using the built-in QR Scanner in Control Center?

3

Answer 2

brandonK212 OP

Sep ’20

@rynning That did the trick. Quite frankly, I did not know there was even a built-in QR code scanner via Control Center. Presumably, users can use the Camera app or the Control Center QR code scanner (I'd imagine the Camera app must have to verify the Associated Domains file, which could explain why it didn't work via the Camera app, but did using your methodology).

Thank you again!

0

Answer 3

stephen_cp OP

2w

I have an even worse problem.

So I test the app via TestFlight's invocation system (Test/Open) button to launch the app clip.

Then I background the app clip.

Now I scan a different QR code (set up as a local experience).

It calls

func scene(
        _ scene: UIScene,
        willContinueUserActivityWithType userActivityType: String
    )

but the scene.userActivity.webpageURL is nil. Because the userActivity is nil. (scene.userActivity)

So what are we supposed to do?

0