Can I develop an mobile app then use the discourse:// scheme?

Yeah, I understand what you are trying to build. You have two options:

  • use the discourse:// scheme, it comes with the advantage that our user api key framework already has that scheme registered (but also the limitation that I highlighted earlier), I don’t think Apple will reject your app, multiple apps can respond to the same URL scheme
  • use your own scheme, the risk here is that if you need to use the user api key from core, your custom scheme will need to be added by an admin for each site, see the Allowed user API auth redirects site setting