OpenUrl freezes app for over 10 seconds

Question

I\'m currently developing an App, that needs to open a browser to display a webpage. To do that i use the [UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL method with

Answer 1

Thanks for the advise from all the guys above, this is how I solved it in Xamarin.iOS (and Xamarin.Forms). The solution is inspired by what the guys have discussed above, and hope it helps others facing the same problem but using Xamarin.

[Register("AppDelegate")]
public class AppDelegate
{
     ....


 public override bool OpenUrl(UIApplication application, NSUrl url, string sourceApplication, NSObject annotation)
 {
      // We do some logic to respond to launching app, and return to that app. 
      Task.Delay(500).ContinueWith(_ => {
            this.InvokeOnMainThread( () => {
                UIApplication.SharedApplication.OpenUrl(NSUrl.FromString(openUri));
            });
        });
 }


}

Answer 2

After doing some very quick benchmarking I found @lidsinkers method to quite clearly be the fastest. Especially when I replaced the delay of 0.1 with 0.001.

Thus I decided to convert it to Swift code:

dispatch_after(dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, Int64(0.001 * Double(NSEC_PER_SEC))), dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
            UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(url)
        }

Full method:

/// An attempt at solving 'openUrl()' freeze problem
func lidsinkerOpenURL(url: NSURL) {
        dispatch_after(dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, Int64(0.001 * Double(NSEC_PER_SEC))), dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
            UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(url)
        }
    }

Answer 3

I noticed the same problem when calling -[UIApplication openUrl:] from the Application Delegate didReceiveRemoteNotification: or didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: since iOS 7.

I solved it by delaying the call a bit using GCD :

// objc
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];
});

It let iOS some time to finish application initialization and the call is then performed without any problem. Don't ask me why.

Does this works for you ?

As this answer is often seen, I added the swift version:

// swift
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
    UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(url)
}

Answer 4

Had the exact same symptoms that you described: worked fine on iOS6, but ~10 second hang on iOS7. Turns out to be a threading issue.

We were issuing the [UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL directly from the AppDelegate method applicationDidBecomeActive(). Moving this to a background thread instantly solved the problem:

- (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application
{
    ...

    // hangs for 10 seconds
    // [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString: url]];

    // Fix: use threads!
    [NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:@selector(openbrowser_in_background:) toTarget:self withObject:url];

    ...
}

- (void)openbrowser_in_background:(NSString *)url
{
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString: url]];
}

Answer 5

For ios 9

if([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:url]){            
        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
            [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];
        });
    }

this seems to have worked for me