Question

I have an application showing a WebView which shows information that includes street addresses like “123 Main St., Citytown, NY”. However, when any of these addresses are tapped, it highlights briefly and the usual browser behavior of launching the Google Maps app is triggered.

I would like to prevent that behavior from occurring because some of the addresses aren’t meant to be selectable. Is there anything I can do?

---

Update:

A commenter asked me to paste an example HTML snippet that triggers the behavior.

<hgroup class="unit list_item_body">
  <h2 class="thick truncated heading">
    <a href="/locations/1234">Foobar</a>
  </h2>
  <h3 class="truncated subheading">
    123 East Market St., Charlottesville, VA, 22902
  </h3>
</hgroup>

Notice there’s no link on the address. Nevertheless, tapping the address triggers the behavior of launching Maps. This occurs whether I’m accessing the site through the WebView or viewing the site itself.

Answer 1

I figured this out. This meta tag will preclude the browser controls from hijacking address strings:

<meta name="format-detection" content="address=no">