When someone texts me an address, the only option is “Open in Maps” which is for Apple Maps, when I’d clearly prefer Google Maps.
When I click on an address in FB Messenger, I get the “open in google maps or Apple Maps” prompt, but choosing Google Maps just takes me to the Google Maps App Store page, even though I have the app installed and updated.
If there is a solution to this problem (where my attempts failed for some reason), I’d be all ears. :)
There’s no solution here and it’s not Apple’s fault either. This is due to the way Facebook Messenger chooses to open Google Maps via URL to the App Store Page instead of checking if Google Maps is installed, then opening with a Google Maps URL scheme registered by the app.
IIRC, on technical side Android have "intents". An app says to the system : "users wants to navigate to a place" and other apps can say "hey, i have a feature to navigate to a place".
Apple don't provide such system and so you are blocked by what the source app wants to open. On Apple apps, it will open other apple apps, and on tier apps, it's up to what they want to open. Of course Apple have zero incentive to change this so I don't see it changing.
I was just wondering where that happens, since I'm being asked what to open the location with every time. Funny enough, I get most of them over whatsapp which is also owned by Facebook.
Ok, I get that. That's simply Apple not giving the option to set the preference in the first place. But I would argue that's a different thing than giving a user the option to set a default app and then ignoring it or reseting it automatically. When I change my browser or mail app on macOS or iOS it's stays like that.
> When I click on an address in FB Messenger, I get the “open in google maps or Apple Maps” prompt, but choosing Google Maps just takes me to the Google Maps App Store page, even though I have the app installed and updated.
Is it possible that this is only the case on FB Messenger? I think there are other Apps offering this option where it does work.
While I agree there is a bit of difference, it's somewhat inconsequential to the end user having their preferences respected:
* Microsoft: we will let you set a preference, but we will ignore/reset it
* Apple: we won't let you set a preference at all
If someone wanted to say "Microsoft and Apple don't care about your preferences, but Microsoft is slightly worse", I think that'd be a fair thing to say.
Agreed that apple's is a lack of a feature, BUT if you look at the features which apple does support, it feels closer to they don't want to add it for anti-competitve reasons, and not a technical/implementation reason
* ios apps can be deep linked via "apple-app-site-association"
* ios apps can have custom url schemes "comgooglemaps://?parameters"
* android has had "intents" for a very long time
* ios sms is already detecting "this is an address" from free text and is hot linking it to their maps app
