WebView loadUrl( always starts browser

Question

trying to load a simple web page in WebView as below alway leads to the fact that the browser is being launched with it. The following code I wrote in my main activity besinde defining "uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" " in the manifest. There is no Exception thrown which I verified with the catch block.

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    try {
        WebView myWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.myWebView);
        WebSettings webSettings = myWebView.getSettings();
        webSettings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        myWebView.loadUrl("http://www.google.com");
    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e("MyApp", e.getMessage());
    }
}

I cannot imagine what coult be simpler than my scenario. I guess as I do not do things like clicking a link it is not necessary to do things like

// By default, redirects cause jump from WebView to default
// system browser. Overriding url loading allows the WebView  
// to load the redirect into this screen.
mWebView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {
    public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
        view.loadUrl(url);
        return false;
    }
});

Do you have any Idea what could go wrong here? In my very first example I do not use setWebViewClient(... at all but also in that case the browser opens instead of loading the side into the web view.

Thanks and Regards Dieter

Paul Lammertsma Paul Lammertsma · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-30T18:26:21

By returning fase in shouldOverrideUrlLoading(), you're instructing the WebView to ignore loading the URL and open the device's default browser instead.

You'll want to replace the contents of that function with:

// By default, redirects cause jump from WebView to default
// system browser. Overriding url loading allows the WebView  
// to load the redirect into this screen.
mWebView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {
    public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
        view.loadUrl(url);
        return true;
    }
});

WebView loadUrl( always starts browser

1 Answers