Jetpack Compose: Bottom bar navigation not responding after deep-linking

I know you got this code from the official documentation, but I don't think it works well for bottom navigation. It keeps the elements in the navigation stack, so pressing the back button from ScreenB will take you back to ScreenA, which does not seem to me to be the right behavior in this case.

That's why it's better to remove all elements from the stack, so that only one of the tabs is always left. And with saveState you won't lose state anyway. This can be done as follows:

fun NavHostController.navigateBottomNavigationScreen(screen: BottomNavigationScreen) = navigate(screen.route) {
    val navigationRoutes = BottomNavigationScreen.values()
        .map(BottomNavigationScreen::route)
    val firstBottomBarDestination = backQueue
        .firstOrNull { navigationRoutes.contains(it.destination.route) }
        ?.destination
    if (firstBottomBarDestination != null) {
        popUpTo(firstBottomBarDestination.id) {
            inclusive = true
            saveState = true
        }
    }
    launchSingleTop = true
    restoreState = true
}

And use it like this:

BottomNavigationItem(
    onClick = {
        navController.navigateBottomNavigationScreen(screen)
    },
    selected = currentDestination?.hierarchy?.any { it.route == screen.route } == true,
    icon = { Icon(imageVector = screen.icon, contentDescription = null) },
    label = { Text(screen.label) }
)

For the same reasons, I wouldn't use deep link navigation in this case. Instead, you process them manually. You can use a view model to not re-process deep link if you leave bottom navigation view and come back:

class DeepLinkProcessingViewModel : ViewModel() {
    private var deepLinkProcessed = false

    fun processDeepLinkIfAvailable(context: Context): String? {
        if (!deepLinkProcessed) {
            val activity = context.findActivity()
            val intentData = activity?.intent?.data?.toString()

            deepLinkProcessed = true
            return intentData
        }
        return null
    }
}

And using this view model you can calculate start destination like this:

val context = LocalContext.current
val deepLinkProcessingViewModel = viewModel<DeepLinkProcessingViewModel>()
val startDestination = rememberSaveable(context) {
    val deepLink = deepLinkProcessingViewModel.processDeepLinkIfAvailable(context)
    if (deepLink == "example://playground") {
        // deep link handled
        BottomNavigationScreen.ScreenB.route
    } else {
        // default start destination
        BottomNavigationScreen.ScreenA.route
    }
}
NavHost(navController = navController, startDestination = startDestination) {
    ...
}

Or, if you have several navigation elements in front of the bottom navigation and you don't want to lose them with a deep link, you can do it as follows:

val navController = rememberNavController()
val context = LocalContext.current
val deepLinkProcessingViewModel = viewModel<DeepLinkProcessingViewModel>()
LaunchedEffect(Unit) {
    val deepLink = deepLinkProcessingViewModel.processDeepLinkIfAvailable(context) ?: return@LaunchedEffect
    if (deepLink == "example://playground") {
        navController.navigateBottomNavigationScreen(BottomNavigationScreen.ScreenB)
    }
}
NavHost(
    navController = navController,
    startDestination = BottomNavigationScreen.ScreenA.route
) {

findActivity:

fun Context.findActivity(): Activity? = when (this) {
    is Activity -> this
    is ContextWrapper -> baseContext.findActivity()
    else -> null
}

Looks like it's finally fixed in the 2.4.0-beta02 release; so it was a bug after all.

I was able to add the saveState and restoreState commands back into my BottomBar (as per the documentation) and following a deep-link I was now still able to click the initial destination.