[ios] UIWebView open links in Safari

I have a very simple UIWebView with content from my application bundle. I would like any links in the web view to open in Safari instead of in the web view. Is this possible?

UIWebView and UIWebViewDelegate are deprecated. You won't be allowed to push an update to the Appstore with it. Reference

Use WKWebView and WKNavigationDelegate

Sample code:

class YourClass: WKNavigationDelegate {

    override public func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        let webView = WKWebView()
        webView.navigationDelegate = self
        self.view.addaddSubview(webView)
    }
    
    public func webView(_ webView: WKWebView,
                    didReceive challenge: URLAuthenticationChallenge,
                    completionHandler: @escaping (URLSession.AuthChallengeDisposition, URLCredential?) -> Void) {
        let cred = URLCredential(trust: challenge.protectionSpace.serverTrust!)
        completionHandler(.useCredential, cred)
    }

    public func webView(_ webView: WKWebView,
                    decidePolicyFor navigationAction: WKNavigationAction,
                    decisionHandler: @escaping (WKNavigationActionPolicy) -> Swift.Void) {
    
        self.webView.load(navigationAction.request)
        decisionHandler(.allow)
    }
}

One quick comment to user306253's answer: caution with this, when you try to load something in the UIWebView yourself (i.e. even from the code), this method will prevent it to happened.

What you can do to prevent this (thanks Wade) is:

if (inType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[inRequest URL]];
    return NO;
}

return YES;

You might also want to handle the UIWebViewNavigationTypeFormSubmitted and UIWebViewNavigationTypeFormResubmitted types.

The accepted answer does not work.

If your page loads URLs via Javascript, the navigationType will be UIWebViewNavigationTypeOther. Which, unfortunately, also includes background page loads such as analytics.

To detect page navigation, you need to compare the [request URL] to the [request mainDocumentURL].

This solution will work in all cases:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)view shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)type
{
    if ([[request URL] isEqual:[request mainDocumentURL]])
    {
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[request URL]];
        return NO;
    }
    else
    {       
        return YES;
    }
}

If anyone wonders, Drawnonward's solution would look like this in Swift:

func webView(webView: UIWebView!, shouldStartLoadWithRequest request: NSURLRequest!, navigationType: UIWebViewNavigationType) -> Bool {
    if navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.LinkClicked {
        UIApplication.sharedApplication().openURL(request.URL)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

In Swift you can use the following code:

extension YourViewController: UIWebViewDelegate {
    func webView(_ webView: UIWebView, shouldStartLoadWith request: URLRequest, navigationType: UIWebView.NavigationType) -> Bool {
        if let url = request.url, navigationType == UIWebView.NavigationType.linkClicked {
            UIApplication.shared.open(url, options: [:], completionHandler: nil)
            return false
        }
        return true
    }

}

Make sure you check for the URL value and the navigationType.

App rejection Note:

Finally UIWbView is dead and Apple will not longer accept it.

Apple started sending email to all the App owner who are still using UIWebView:

Deprecated API Usage - Apple will stop accepting submissions of apps that use UIWebView APIs.

Apple takes User Privacy very seriously and it is obvious that they won’t allow insecure webview.

So do remove UIWebView from your app as soon as possible. don't use try to use UIWebView in new created app and I Prefer to using WKWebView if possible

ITMS-90809: Deprecated API Usage - Apple will stop accepting submissions of apps that use UIWebView APIs . See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiwebview for more information.

Example:

import UIKit
import WebKit

class WebInfoController: UIViewController,WKNavigationDelegate {

    var webView : WKWebView = {
        var webview = WKWebView()
        return webview
    }()

    var _fileName : String!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        self.view.addSubview(webView)
        webView.fillSuperview()
        let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: _fileName, withExtension: "html")!
        webView.loadFileURL(url, allowingReadAccessTo: url)
        let request = URLRequest(url: url)
        webView.load(request)
    }


    func webView(webView: WKWebView, didFailProvisionalNavigation navigation: WKNavigation!, withError error: NSError) {
        print(error.localizedDescription)
    }
    func webView(webView: WKWebView, didStartProvisionalNavigation navigation: WKNavigation!) {
        print("Strat to load")
    }
    func webView(webView: WKWebView, didFinishNavigation navigation: WKNavigation!) {
        print("finish to load")
    }
}

The other answers have one problem: they rely on the action you do and not on the link itself to decide whether to load it in Safari or in webview.

Now sometimes this is exactly what you want, which is fine; but some other times, especially if you have anchor links in your page, you want really to open only external links in Safari, and not internal ones. In that case you should check the URL.host property of your request.

I use that piece of code to check whether I have a hostname in the URL that is being parsed, or if it is embedded html:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
    static NSString *regexp = @"^(([a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9-]*[a-zA-Z0-9])[.])+([A-Za-z]|[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9-]*[A-Za-z0-9])$";
    NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF MATCHES %@", regexp];

    if ([predicate evaluateWithObject:request.URL.host]) {
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:request.URL];
        return NO; 
    } else {
        return YES; 
    }
}

You can of course adapt the regular expression to fit your needs.

In my case I want to make sure that absolutely everything in the web view opens Safari except the initial load and so I use...

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)inWeb shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)inRequest navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)inType {
     if(inType != UIWebViewNavigationTypeOther) {
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[inRequest URL]];
        return NO;
     }
     return YES;
}

Here's the Xamarin iOS equivalent of drawnonward's answer.

class WebviewDelegate : UIWebViewDelegate {
    public override bool ShouldStartLoad (UIWebView webView, NSUrlRequest request, UIWebViewNavigationType navigationType) {
        if (navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationType.LinkClicked) {
            UIApplication.SharedApplication.OpenUrl (request.Url);
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }
}