Switch to a different activity from TWA

Question

I've put together a PWA and wanted to convert it into an Android App. I've done so and my Android app consists of Main Activity and TWA that I start from the Main Activity.

Is there a way to switch from inside the TWA to some other activity on some event in the PWA running in this TWA? Like button click. Preferably from the HTML/Javascript of the PWA itself.

The end goal is to ad ads to the app (I'm using some paid APIs in the PWA so I need to at least break even and cannot monetize it on the web development side since Google AdSense and likes need context rich web-apps like blogs) and I've figured out that Google AdMob don't show up in TWA, they require a native Android Activity.

This question is closely related but I don't know where to put this URI: Launching another activity from a Trusted Web Activity (TWA)

Thank you!

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible to start a different Activity. You will need to define a custom schema and link to that schema from the PWA:

This is defined inside AndroidManifest.xml , where the Activity you want to open from the PWA is specified. In the example below, we want to open ReviewActivity from the PWA, so we define:

  <activity android:name=".ReviewActivity"
      android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar">
      <intent-filter>
          <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
          <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
          <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
          <data android:scheme="doom-fire" android:host="review" />
      </intent-filter>
  </activity>

Then, in the web application, whenever you link to doom-fire://review , ReviewActivity will be opened:

<a href="doom-fire://review">Rate app now!</a>

I wrote a complete blogpost for the in-app review use-case that you may want to check out.