URLs, Links, and Deep Links

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Launch URL

Use the Launch URL to open a link when the notification is clicked. This typically opens in the default browser and should start with https://.

If you’re using a mobile deep link like your-custom-scheme://, results may vary. See Deep Linking.

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Targeting multiple platforms

If you send a single message to both web and mobile users, use:

• url — for general targeting across all platforms.
• web_url — for web push Subscriptions.
• app_url — for mobile Subscriptions.

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Additional data

Instead of Launch URL, you can use the Additional Data field (data in the API) to send custom data with your push and handle this data in your app using the SDK’s Notification Click Listener via the additionalData property. This might be a better option than Launch URL to provide more flexibility.

OneSignal automatically tracks user clicks of links within your emails. This tracking is performed at two levels:

• Per email, where any click of any link is counted per email or email template. This is used to calculate message-level click-through rate and click-to-open rate. This is reported as both:

  • Total clicks, where the same user clicking the same link in the same delivered email multiple times is counted multiple times
  • Unique clicks, where the same user licking the same link in the same delivered email multiple times is counted once

• Per link per email, where any click of any link is counted for that specific link within an email or email template. This is also reported as total and unique counts. OneSignal will calculate link-level click stats for the first 30 links found in each email.

Tracking email link clicks requires changing the URL to capture the event, then redirecting the user back to the original URL you set. This happens almost instantly but may cause unexpected behavior, particularly with deep links. For example, a URL like:

https://some-domain.com/the-page

will be obfuscated to something like:

https://some-domain/c/eJxU0D2uGzEMBODTrDoZJPW3...

It will then immediately redirect to the intended URL.

This behavior is normal and nearly invisible to users. However, it may have unexpected behavior when using Deep links and may require you to Disable Link Click Tracking.

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Enable link click tracking

This feature is enabled by default and in most cases does not require further configuration. As long as Track link clicks is checked for your email or email template, OneSignal will track link clicks.

In some cases, especially if you are constructing links with Liquid syntax we may not detect a link and track it automatically. You can explicitly tell us to track a link using Liquid like so:

{{ 'https://onesignal.com' | track_link }}

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Disable link click tracking

To disable click tracking for all links in an entire email:

• Dashboard: Uncheck Track link clicks.
• API: Set disable_email_click_tracking: true.

To disable an individual link from being tracked while Track link clicks is enabled, you can explicitly opt out of individual links using Liquid like so:

{{ 'https://some-domain.com/the-page' | do_not_track_link }}

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View Click Tracking Statistics

Email-level click tracking statistics are displayed at the top of the page for each email and email template in the Click-Through Rate card.

Link-level click tracking statistics are displayed in the Click Activity panel for each email and email template. The first 30 links will be tracked, with the remainder summarized as “All other links.”

In-app message image, button, and background elements have URL In-App Click Actions and HTML in-app messages have the openUrl method in the In-App JS Library.

Depending on how your links are setup, you may need to deep link via the Action Name following the Deep Linking guide.

OneSignal provides trackable shortened links that you can add to any SMS.

Dashboard URL Shortener

To create a trackable shortened URL, click the Insert Trackable Link link beneath the message input box, and enter your link into the modal:

Click the Insert trackable link button to add the short link to your message:

In the message preview, the link will appear in your message as the placeholder like 1sgnl.co/XXXX, which will be replaced with a trackable link for each user when the message is sent:

API URL Shortener

To send trackable links via our API, please see our SMS create message API reference.

Inject values like external_id or email directly into URLs.

Example:

  https://yourdomain.com/profile/user={{subscription.external_id}} 

If the user’s external_id is 12345, the final URL will be:

https://yourdomain.com/profile/user=12345

Similarly:

https://yourdomain.com/profile/email={{subscription.email}}

If the user has an email address of john@example.com, the final URL will be:

https://yourdomain.com/profile/email=john@example.com

Reference user tags stored in OneSignal.

Example:

https://yourdomain.com/topic/{{tag_key}}

If the user has a tag tag_key with a value of technology, the final URL will be:

https://yourdomain.com/topic/technology

If the tag tag_key is not set, the URL will be:

https://yourdomain.com/topic/

Use the default filter to set a default value if the tag is not set.

https://yourdomain.com/topic/{{tag_key | default: 'unknown'}}

If the tag_key is not set, the URL with the default filter will become:

https://yourdomain.com/topic/unknown

Using our Create message APIs and Templates. You can set the URL in the template with specific liquid syntax to reference the custom_data object in the API request.

Example template URL:

https://yourdomain.com/invoice={{message.custom_data.invoice_number}}

Example API request with custom_data:

{
    "template_id": "YOUR_TEMPLATE_ID",
    "custom_data": {
        "invoice_number": "12345"
    }
}

The final URL will be:

https://yourdomain.com/invoice=12345