We operate a captive portal WIFI network in a walled-garden setup. There is no public internet access on this network. Users connect to our SSID and can only reach a local resource.
On Android, our captive portal can show a button that launches the devices default browser and navigates to our portal page. We cannot reproduce this on iOS: we can place the button inside the CNA tear sheet but tapping it does not open Safari, the redirect simply does not happen.
I found this older thread describing the same need: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/75498
From that thread, it seems the behavior changed several times. It reportedly worked around iOS 11.2 then broke again in later releases.
My questions:
- On current iOS, is it possible to open Safarı or the default browser programmatically from within the CNA? For example, via a link or button after authentication? If yes, what is the supported way?
- If it is not supported, is that intentional? Is there any official documentation describing CNA limitations and the recommended pattern?
- For a walled-garden network with no public Internet, what is Apple's recommended approach to move the user from the CNA into a full browser session?