Feature #665
closed
Flipboard can no longer open Privacy Browser
Added by J.R. Oldroyd about 3 years ago.
Updated about 3 years ago.
Description
For a long time (several years now) Flipboard on Android has been able to open pages in Privacy Browser using the "View on Web" menu item. But following a recent Flipboard update that button fails with the message:
No application found to complete this action.
Some searching unearths an open issue on the Flipboard web site:
https://flipboard.helpshift.com/a/flipboard/?l=en&p=android&s=known-issues&f=open-issue-external-browser-on-android
That issue suggests that Flipboard has changed to a new way of opening the default browser on Android, although implementation specifics are lacking.
It would be great if it could be made to work again. Thanks.
- Status changed from New to Closed
- Assignee set to Soren Stoutner
It doesn't look like there is anything Privacy Browser can do to fix this problem on our end. As noted in the Flipboard bug report, Flipboard has changed their intent to not include the browsers (which is why a number of browsers are listed as affected). They need to change it back. Specifically, they need to use an intent that matches one of the intent filters listed in Privacy Browser's manifest:
https://git.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyBrowser.git;a=blob;f=app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml;hb=HEAD
The standard intent filter they should be targeting is:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<data android:scheme="http" />
<data android:scheme="https" />
</intent-filter>
Thanks for the speedy reply, Soren.
The Flipboard issue does note that several browsers (Chrome, Edge, Samsung Internet, Opera, Brave) do work with whatever intent Flipboard is now using.
I found the Chrome AndroidManifest.xml here:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/master/chrome/android/java/AndroidManifest.xml
While it is similar to the PrivacyBrowser one, it does also have more filter entries. Those for schemes "about", "javascript" probably aren't the issue here, but their scheme "content" includes additional mimeTypes such as "application/xhtml+xml". And, further down, they also include filters for other content and file types and also for web bundles.
Is there something there that could also be added to PrivacyBrowser?
I have also just sent a message to Flipboard support to see if they can tell us what intent they are now using.
I'll update back here if I hear anything.
You are correct that Chrome has a large and overly messy set of intent filters. I am generally not inclined to pollute Privacy Browser's intent filters with a bunch of junk entries.
The content filter is a little interesting. It is used to load local files from the device instead of files from the internet. If Flipboard is indeed requesting that browsers load files locally from their app instead of from the internet that could be what is going on. If that is what is going on, Flipboard should probably stop doing it, as this would allow them to spy on what the browser is doing, which I would consider unacceptable. Also not that as part of the scoped storage transition, I will be looking closely at how Content:// URLs are handled. https://redmine.stoutner.com/issues/546
I will be interested to hear what Flipboard has to say about why they broke their open-with-browser intent. However, I think the onus is on them to change their intent back to opening with whatever the default browser is instead of doing some silliness that requires custom import filters on the part of other apps.
Also available in: Atom
PDF