Forwarded documentation

What is Forwarded?

Forwarded creates web-accessible links that carry developer-defined JSON payloads. When a user visits a Forwarded Link and installs or opens the associated app, the native SDK resolves the payload — through the iOS Smart App Banner app-argument, the Android Install Referrer API, or Universal and App Links.

Context that used to disappear at the App Store boundary — subscription offers, referral codes, invite contexts, partner campaign identifiers, QR activation data — now flows reliably through one primitive. Every use case shares the same session model, the same API, and the same SDK.

Every resolved session is labeled with the delivery mechanism and a determinism tier. You always know whether a payload arrived through a deterministic native path or through a lower-confidence channel. Forwarded never silently upgrades a lower-confidence resolution.

Core guarantee

A Forwarded Session created from a web click will resolve to the same payload regardless of whether the user installs fresh or opens an existing app — provided the session has not expired and the token is presented correctly by the SDK.

Forwarded reports the forwarding mechanism (Smart App Banner, Install Referrer, Universal Link, App Link, explicit token) and determinism classification alongside every resolved payload. Your code can gate behavior on the determinism tier when your use case demands it.

Start here

The fastest path: register an app in the dashboard, create a Forwarded Link with a JSON payload, install the native SDK in your app, resolve the pending session on first launch, and claim the session after the user logs in or signs up.

The quickstart walks through each step end-to-end with working code. The concept pages cover the session lifecycle, payload rules, and determinism classification in depth. The platform pages (iOS, Android) cover SDK setup and edge cases.