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expo-web-browser provides access to the system's web browser and supports handling redirects. On Android, it uses ChromeCustomTabs and on iOS, it uses SFSafariViewController or ASWebAuthenticationSession, depending on the method you call. As of iOS 11, SFSafariViewController no longer shares cookies with Safari, so if you are using WebBrowser for authentication you will want to use WebBrowser.openAuthSessionAsync, and if you just want to open a webpage (such as your app privacy policy), then use WebBrowser.openBrowserAsync.

Installation

If you are installing this in an existing React Native app, make sure to install expo in your project.

Configuration in app config

You can configure expo-web-browser using its built-in config plugin if you use config plugins in your project (Continuous Native Generation (CNG)). The plugin allows you to configure various properties that cannot be set at runtime and require building a new app binary to take effect. If your app does not use CNG, then you'll need to manually configure the library.

Usage

import { useState } from 'react';
import { Button, Text, View, StyleSheet } from 'react-native';
import * as WebBrowser from 'expo-web-browser';
%%placeholder-start%%%%placeholder-end%%import Constants from 'expo-constants';

export default function App() {
  const [result, setResult] = useState(null);

  const _handlePressButtonAsync = async () => {
    let result = await WebBrowser.openBrowserAsync('https://expo.dev');
    setResult(result);
  };
  return (
    <View style={styles.container}>
      <Button title="Open WebBrowser" onPress={_handlePressButtonAsync} />
      <Text>{result && JSON.stringify(result)}</Text>
    </View>
  );
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    alignItems: 'center',
    justifyContent: 'center',
    paddingTop: Constants.statusBarHeight,
    backgroundColor: '#ecf0f1',
  },
});

Handling deep links from the WebBrowser

API

import * as WebBrowser from 'expo-web-browser';

No API data file found, sorry!

Error codes

ERR_WEB_BROWSER_REDIRECT

Web only: The window cannot complete the redirect request because the invoking window doesn't have a reference to its parent. This can happen if the parent window was reloaded.

ERR_WEB_BROWSER_BLOCKED

Web only: The popup window was blocked by the browser or failed to open. This can happen in mobile browsers when the window.open() method was invoked too long after a user input was fired.

Mobile browsers do this to prevent malicious websites from opening many unwanted popups on mobile.

You're method can still run in an async function but there cannot be any long running tasks before it. You can use hooks to disable user-inputs until any other processes have finished loading.

ERR_WEB_BROWSER_CRYPTO

Web only: The current environment doesn't support crypto. Ensure you are running from a secure origin (localhost/https).