Universal Link Onboarding & Deep Linking – Inventing New Patterns for Seamless iOS UX

Microsoft | Phone Link iOS

As we expanded Phone Link to support Microsoft Account sign-in and cross-device file sharing, I led the complete redesign of our Link to Windows AASA website to support both App Clips and iOS universal links. This work was foundational to evolving our onboarding flow from Bluetooth-only to a full-featured, account-enabled experience. In doing so, I pioneered two key UX solutions that navigated around restrictive and poorly documented iOS platform behaviors—solutions that are now gaining traction across the industry as best practices for building seamless iOS onboarding flows. First, I solved the long-standing iOS limitation of lacking native deferred deep linking, which Android supports out of the box. We needed a single QR code that could install the app and carry onboarding context into the first launch. Without a solution, users would have been forced to scan the same QR twice. I developed and productized a novel workaround: our website copies the original link into the iOS clipboard just before redirecting to the App Store. When the app is first launched, it checks the clipboard, asks for permission, and resumes onboarding exactly where the user left off. This clipboard-based deferred deep linking flow was both elegant and reliable, and became a core enabler of our frictionless setup experience. Second, I discovered and addressed a non-obvious iOS behavior: universal links don’t trigger app launches if they match the domain of the website the user is currently on. This broke deep linking from our AASA site for users who manually entered the URL. To resolve this, I introduced a second universal link domain and routed CTA clicks through it, preserving full context via query parameters. This allowed deep linking to work reliably across all user entry points, including App Clips, QR scans, browser links, and manual visits. These solutions not only resolved major platform constraints—they helped define new patterns for building premium onboarding experiences on iOS. By navigating undocumented edge cases and crafting highly maintainable, user-friendly architectures, I set a new standard for how large-scale iOS UX should be built. These flows became core to the success of our iOS offering and are now being looked at as models for other Microsoft and industry teams alike.