This is not devtools, I am not exactly sure which component to put this under, so please re-assign it if it's not Infra>Client>Android.

I would guess this is somewhere in the omnibox or net code? It's definitely not infrastructure.

mariakhomenko@ knows this area well; I'm sure she knows this situation well.  (I have a vague recollection that this behavior is  intentional but don't recall the details.)

This is working as intended.

We do not want input into omnibox to dispatch intents to other applications. This behaviour is surprising and not what user generally intends to do when they type into omnibox. Consider a user wanting to see a map of minneapolis -- they are unlikely to type a url to maps app in Chrome if they want to see the maps app.

For redirect links (e.g. goo.gl -> https://maps.google.com) that originate elsewhere, but go through Chrome because they don't match the manifest, we will handle this by sending the user to the application. However, for someone using Chrome and intentionally typing into omnibox, that's a signal for us that they want to see a webpage.

The issue is that Chrome opens the GooglePlay, but does not respect the GooglePlay continue URL feature. Making this a real issue, only Google phones (nexus/pixel) treat NFC tag scanning as Chrome browser address bar input. Other browsers, other phones work well. At least Chrome address bar input should send a different user agent from the one being sent when page link is clicked. Thanks for your attention.

I meant it opens the GooglePlay App.

Scanning the NFC tag should result in an incoming intent to the browser, which would not be treated the same way as the URL typed in the omnibox. Could you paste logcat output for the NFC tag scan?

Thanks Maria, two questions:
1. is there any way the server tell the omnibox input from regular page clicks? Both user agents are identical.
2. is there any way omnibox input to work with GooglePlay continue url (go/phonesky)?

1. No, and this is not something we would expose in a useragent

2. Could you write-up a specific example of what that would look like? I don't know what continue URLs for Play are or how you are setting up your link. Be specific about the shape of the original URL, system setup, and what you would expect to happen. Then we can discuss whether it's feasible.

Here is the description of continue url:
https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/universal-store/documentation/android-client/integration/continue-urls?pli=1

It used to work with Chrome browser.

Maria,

It looks like this feature request is owned by you, and the reporter wrote up the doc you requested.  Can you evaluate it?

Troy, can you take a look at this?

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/24abd20270d691680857da86bb1e228fd40ba72c

commit 24abd20270d691680857da86bb1e228fd40ba72c
Author: Troy Hildebrandt <thildebr@chromium.org>
Date: Wed Jul 12 00:04:06 2017

Ensure URLs are not overridden when pasted into omnibox.

We get PageTransition.FROM_ADDRESS_BAR when pasting a URL into the omnibox, and
as a result this is treated differently than typing the URL in manually.

This fix treats both PageTransition.TYPED and PageTransition.FROM_ADDRESS_BAR
as being typed for the purposes of URL overriding in
ExternalNavigationHandler#shouldOverrideUrlLoadingInternal.

Bug:  709217 
Change-Id: Ieb4ff5a724c67ad802bba2921a8ada4a123471d6
Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/567578
Reviewed-by: Maria Khomenko <mariakhomenko@chromium.org>
Commit-Queue: Troy Hildebrandt <thildebr@chromium.org>
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#485733}
[modify] https://crrev.com/24abd20270d691680857da86bb1e228fd40ba72c/chrome/android/java/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/externalnav/ExternalNavigationHandler.java
[modify] https://crrev.com/24abd20270d691680857da86bb1e228fd40ba72c/chrome/android/javatests/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/externalnav/ExternalNavigationHandlerTest.java