App Clips: how to gracefully/programmatically close?

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Created Jan ’23

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Question about App Clips. Is anyone aware of a mechanism whereby an app clip can return the user to the app from which it was invoked when the task is completed? For example, for an app clip invoked via a url in safari, is there a way to programmatically close the app clip after the task is complete and return the user to safari?

I imagine this might be technically possible via a deep link if you were to know the custom url scheme for whichever system app invoked the app clip, if system apps do in fact even have custom url schemes that are usable by non-system apps, but that seems like a poor practice.

There is lots of documentation and guidance around app clip invocation but none that I can find around the conclusion of the experience. Is the guidance or best practice just to inform the user that they need to manually navigate away from the app clip after the task completes?

Surprised to see so little information about this given Apple's emphasis on using app clips to allow the user to complete a discrete task or flow.

Thanks in advance for any insights.

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Answer 1

dgonz OP

Aug ’23

Are there any updates on if there is a way to get this behavior? I think it'd be really useful, especially with the ability in iOS 17 to be able to launch app clips from within another app. You can see in this demo from WWDC https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10178/ that the app clip is launched from within another app, but there's no way to navigate back to that app from the app clip.

It seems like having a back navigation button in the top left corner of the screen that takes you back to the launching app would be consistent with what happens when you have something like launch a url that takes the user into Safari. There's an easy way for the user to get back to the original context. This behavior would be very useful in an app clip context.

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Answer 2

edorphy OP

Sep ’23

@mattk-wt sounds like a great feedback to send in. If you create one post your feedback number in here and I'll make a feedback for the same capability and reference your number as I would use it in one of my apps too.

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