Deferred Deep Link
A deferred deep link is a mechanism that carries a navigation destination across an app installation. When the user taps a link or scans a QR code without having the app installed, they are sent to the app store, and on the first launch after installing, the app opens the destination screen that was originally requested. A plain deep link only works when the app is already present, so the request is lost the moment an install is needed; deferring the destination until after the install is what the name refers to.
A QR code printed on a product package is a typical case. Someone who scans the code without the app gets the store page, installs the app, and lands directly on the page for that specific product rather than on a generic home screen. The point is that the context of the scan, meaning which product the person was looking at, survives the install.
Implementations typically rely on services such as Branch, AppsFlyer or Adjust. Pointing the URL stored in the QR code at one of these services lets the deferred deep link be handled automatically. Firebase Dynamic Links, once the common choice, shut down on 25 August 2025 and its already-issued links no longer resolve, so it is not an option for new work. If you only need navigation for users who already have the app, Android App Links and iOS Universal Links let you run this yourself with OS-native mechanisms, but restoring context across an install is beyond those standards and still requires a third-party service or your own post-install matching.
Restoring the context after an install is not guaranteed. On iOS the usual approach is for the web page to write a token to the clipboard and for the app to read it on first launch, but since iOS 16 reading the clipboard raises a dialog asking permission to paste, and nothing can be restored if the user declines. Probabilistic matching, inferred from the IP address and device attributes, is used alongside it, yet its accuracy on iOS fell after App Tracking Transparency and Apple discourages matching that is not based on consent. When designing a journey that starts at a QR code, prepare a fallback for the cases where restoration fails, landing the user cleanly on the normal home screen or onboarding.