Which key should we use in Associated Domains - applinks or webcredentials ?

I'm adding Universal Link support to a new app.


I have done this before on 2 other apps in the past, and in those cases, the associated domains were entered in the project Capabilities tab (in XCode) like this:


"applinks:mydomain.com"

"applinks:*.mydomain.com"


However, today using XCode, I see when I click the plus button to add a new domain specification, it pre-seeds the text field with


"webcredentials:exanple.com"


Soooo, can someone tell me first if this is a replacement for applinks? So far, I have been unable to find any documentation which explains what happened to applinks. I found this page (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/password_autofill/setting_up_an_app_s_associated_domains) which simply shows what I see in XCode (ie. "webcredentials" and not "applinks") - so, what's the story?


Similarly, this page shows the apple-app-site-association file which references "webcredentials" instead of the format I have used in the past which uses applinks. Are they interchangable? Does the apple-app-site-association file need both webcredentials section and an applinks section?

Of course, my other apps which use universal links still work, and they use "applinks" - maybe they are interchangable now?


Which should I use? Or both?
Thanks. Jordan.

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Well, nobody seems to know anything about this. I submitted a new version of my app to the AppStore yesterday with BOTH applinks and wecredentials in the associated domains.

applinks
and
webcredentials
are different:
  • applinks
    is for universal links
  • webcredentials
    is for web credential sharing

If you just want universal links, use just

applinks
. For info on this, see Enabling Universal Links.

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Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
  • Enabling Universal Links now 404

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Well, that sounds simple. Thank you.

I also wondered about this, and I find that most of Apple's documentation is woeful in this respect, they suddenly mention webcredentials in their example on the Associated Domains, but they don't bother to qualify what is meant or the impact it may have. Thankfully there's a plethora of info available out there to assist where Apple have failed