handling links in a webview

Question

I have my WebView loading all links inside the webview - but when I select an email link it tries to load it in the webview instead of launching an email app on

Answer 1

Going off of the answer provided by @schwiz, here is a cleaner example. Assuming the WebView is named webView:

webView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {
    // shouldOverrideUrlLoading makes this `WebView` the default handler for URLs inside the app, so that links are not kicked out to other apps.
    @Override
    public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
        // Use an external email program if the link begins with "mailto:".
        if (url.startsWith("mailto:")) {
            // We use `ACTION_SENDTO` instead of `ACTION_SEND` so that only email programs are launched.
            Intent emailIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO);

             // Parse the url and set it as the data for the `Intent`.
            emailIntent.setData(Uri.parse(url));

            // `FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK` opens the email program in a new task instead as part of this application.
            emailIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);

            // Make it so.
            startActivity(emailIntent);
            return true;
        } else {  
            // Returning false causes WebView to load the URL while preventing it from adding URL redirects to the WebView history.
            return false;
        }
    }
});

I have tested this with all the mailto: options: multiple email addresses, CC, BCC, subject, and body.