Launch Apple Mail App from within my own App?

Question

What I already found is

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@\"mailto:\"]];

But I just want to open the Mail ap

Answer 1

Expanding on Amit's answer: This will launch the mail app, with a new email started. Just edit the strings to change how the new email begins.

//put email info here:
NSString *toEmail=@"supp0rt.fl0ppyw0rm@gmail.com";
NSString *subject=@"The subject!";
NSString *body = @"It is raining in sunny California!";

//opens mail app with new email started
NSString *email = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"mailto:%@?subject=%@&body=%@", toEmail,subject,body];
email = [email stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:email]];

Answer 2

Since the only way to launch other applications is by using their URL schemes, the only way to open mail is by using the mailto: scheme. Which, unfortunately for your case, will always open the compose view.

Answer 3

You can launch any app on iOS if you know its URL scheme. Don't know that the Mail app scheme is public, but you can be sneaky and try this:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"message:message-id"]];

Props to Farhad Noorzay for clueing me into this. It's some bit of reverse engineering the Mail app API. More info here: https://medium.com/@vijayssundaram/how-to-deep-link-to-ios-7-mail-6c212bc79bd9

Answer 4

Apparently Mail application supports 2nd url scheme - message:// which ( I suppose) allows to open specific message if it was fetched by the application. If you do not provide message url it will just open mail application:

NSURL* mailURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"message://"];
if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:mailURL]) {
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:mailURL];
}

Answer 5

Run your app on a real device and call

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"your@email.com"]];

Note, that this line takes no effect on simulator.

Answer 6

It will open Default Mail App with composer view:

NSURL* mailURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"mailto://"];
if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:mailURL]) {
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:mailURL];
}

It will open Default Mail App:

NSURL* mailURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"message://"];
if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:mailURL]) {
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:mailURL];
}