Powerful Sharing

Share Sheet

When I tap the Share button in Photos (on my iPhone’s tiny 4″ screen), this is what I see:

1. A description of what I’ve selected
2. The selected item(s)
3. A list of nearby devices and recently contacted people
4. A list of apps through which I can share
5. A hint that there might be more

In the third section, you can easily AirDrop your item(s) to a nearby Apple device. This can be the easiest way to send a photo to your Mac or iPad for immediate use instead of waiting for iCloud to sync it back and forth. Additionally, folks you’ve messaged recently appear here for quick access.

More Actions

To me there’s enough evidence by the truncated item at the bottom that there are more sharing actions available if I just scroll down. However, if you’re looking for a specific action for the first time, you might not know where to find it.

It’s therefore important to understand, in the context of sharing, what qualifies as an app versus an action. For the most part, actions are within the current app—such as adding a photo to an album. Copy, Print, and Save to Files are also commonly available actions.

Apps are other apps on your device that are capable of opening or acting on the item you’re sharing. You might be sharing the item with a person or perhaps just to another app.

Customize Apps & Actions

If you scroll all the way to the right of the apps, you’ll find More, which shows all apps capable of sharing from the one you’re in (above left). Tap Edit and you can choose favorite apps to show first, arrange them in your desired order, and disable apps you don’t want offered.

It’s important to remember that apps you disable in one app’s Share Sheet will be disabled in those of other apps as well. So, enable the apps you use to share items across your entire device experience.

If you scroll all the way to the bottom of a Share Sheet, below the actions, you can tap Edit Actions. In this editor, you can likewise identify favorite actions to appear at the top and arrange those favorites in your preferred order.

More Options

In some apps, at the top of the Share Sheet there is a link to Options. These are one-time sharing choices; they only apply to the item(s) you’re sharing this moment and will reset for subsequent shares. That’s why they appear together with the item to be shared.

For all shares, this panel begins with Send As, where you can choose how you want to share the selected item(s). For example:

• In Photos, an iCloud Link might be preferable to keep an email size manageable when sending videos or more than a few photos.
• In Safari, a PDF of a whole webpage would be easy to view or print while a Web Archive would permit interaction like clicking links.

A description below each set of choices specifies how some of them work depending on context. Some apps also offer additional sharing options, such as those you see above for Photos under Include.