Xamarin Forms: How to open an app from another app?

Question

I have 2 applications ( A and B ) developed using Xamarin.Forms. I need to open app A from app B.

I have tried like below as per this thread:

In the view

Answer 1

Xamarin.Forms.Forms.Context is out of date since XF 2.5 . So you could use Android.App.Application.Context instead of it or use the plugin Plugin.CurrentActivity

So you could modify the code in Android like following

using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Android.App;
using Android.Content;
using Android.Content.PM;
using Android.OS;
using Android.Runtime;
using Android.Views;
using Android.Widget;
using App14;
using App14.Droid;
using Xamarin.Forms;

[assembly: Dependency(typeof(OpenAppAndroid))]
namespace App14.Droid
{
    public class OpenAppAndroid : IAppHandler
    {
        public Task<bool> LaunchApp(string packageName)
        {


            bool result = false;

            try
            {

                PackageManager pm = Android.App.Application.Context.PackageManager;

                if (IsAppInstalled(packageName))
                {
                    
                    Intent intent = pm.GetLaunchIntentForPackage(packageName);
                    if (intent != null)
                    {
                      
                        intent.SetFlags(ActivityFlags.NewTask);
                        Android.App.Application.Context.StartActivity(intent);
                    }
                }

                else
                {
                  
                    Intent intent = pm.GetLaunchIntentForPackage("the package name of play store on your device");
                    if (intent != null)
                    {

                        intent.SetFlags(ActivityFlags.NewTask);
                        Android.App.Application.Context.StartActivity(intent);
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (ActivityNotFoundException)
            {
                result = false;
            }

            return Task.FromResult(result);
        }


        private bool IsAppInstalled(string packageName)
        {
            PackageManager pm = Android.App.Application.Context.PackageManager;
            bool installed = false;
            try
            {
                pm.GetPackageInfo(packageName, PackageInfoFlags.Activities);
                installed = true;
            }
            catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e)
            {
                installed = false;
            }

            return installed;
        }

    }
}

For iOS you could refer Launch Another IOS App from Xamarin Forms App .

Answer 2

Have you tried using Xamarin Essentials : Xamarin.Essentials: Launcher

   public class LauncherTest
{
    public async Task OpenRideShareAsync()
    {
        var supportsUri = await Launcher.CanOpenAsync("lyft://");
        if (supportsUri)
            await Launcher.OpenAsync("lyft://ridetype?id=lyft_line");
    }
}

Or

Device.OpenUri(new Uri("fb://page/page_id"));

Device.OpenUri(new Uri("twitter://user?user_id=userid"))

don't forget to use the correct package name when opening specific apps