Ok so for some background, our app has a keyboard extension where we run a dictation service. Due to iOS limitations, this requires the user to press a button on the keyboard which will then bring the user to our app to activate an audio session. Once the audio session has been activated, it takes the user back to the original app it came from to continue using the keyboard + dictation service.
The problem we're running into involves iOS 26.0 and the iMessages app. Whenever our app tries to switch back to the iMessages app using Deep Link (specifically the messages:// URL), the iMessages app opens up a new message compose sheet. This compose sheet replaces the view or message thread that the user was previously looking at which we don't want.
This behavior appears to be only happening in iOS 26 and not in any of the previous iOS versions (tested up to iOS 18.6). We know that it should be possible to bring the user back to the messages app without opening up this new compose sheet, because similar apps do the same thing and these apps have been verified to work on iOS 26.
We've tried also using the sms:// URL but that always opens a new message compose sheet regardless of whether or not it's iOS 26.0.
I might’ve missed a memo here, but is the messages URLs scheme documented anyway? If so, please post a link to the docs so I can come up to speed.
If not, see Supported URL Schemes.
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
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