How to get YouTube Links to Open the App Directly

You can create special links, often called "deep links," that open the YouTube app directly on a mobile device instead of in a web browser. This provides a much smoother experience for your audience. This guide covers the simplest method that works for most cases, as well as more advanced, platform-specific options for developers.

The Simple Method: Using the youtube:// Scheme

  1. Take any standard YouTube URL.

    For example, let's use:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

    This method also works with other YouTube URL formats like https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ.

  2. Replace 'https://' with 'youtube://'.

    The new link will be:

    youtube://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

  3. This link will now open the YouTube app directly if it's installed on the user's device.

Important Considerations & Fallback Behavior

What happens if the YouTube app isn't installed?

The youtube:// link will simply not work. To handle this, you need to provide a fallback to the standard https:// URL. This usually requires a bit of code on your website or in your application to detect if the app is installed and redirect accordingly.

For a simple solution, you can use a service like Linkly, which can handle this device-aware redirection for you.

Platform-Specific Information for Developers

For those building applications, there are more robust methods for creating deep links that offer more control.

On iOS 9 and newer, most standard https://www.youtube.com links will automatically open in the YouTube app if it's installed. This is a feature from Apple called "Universal Links." This means that for many iOS users, you may not need to do anything special.

Android: Intent URLs

Android uses a system called "Intents" to open apps. Developers can create an Android Intent to open a YouTube link. This is a more powerful method because you can specify what should happen if the app isn't installed, such as opening the Google Play Store to prompt the user to download the app.

An example of an Android Intent for a YouTube video would be:
intent://#Intent;package=com.google.android.youtube;S.browser_fallback_url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ;end

This tells Android to try and open the YouTube app, and if it can't, to open the fallback URL in a browser.

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