CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosiphone
Joe Thomson
Joe Thomson

Reputation: 31

How do some apps appear in the Photos app share sheet?

I have an app that lists several file types in it's Info.plist (as CFBundleDocumentTypes). Sure enough the app icon appears in the share sheet when I try and share an image from the Files app, for example, or share an audio file from Voice Memos. But NOT when trying to share an image from the Photos app.

There are several posts about this already but most are quite old. Most agree that it is impossible to make your app icon appear in this list, and the best you can hope for is to make a share or action extension that will appear further down the list.

However as far as I can tell – and correct me if I'm wrong – its impossible to launch the app from a share or action extension, passing in the shared file. I don't want a separate UI to appear, I want the app to launch with the shared file passed to it.

Is there no other solution? And most importantly, how is it that icons for Slack, Amazon, Pinterest and others DO appear in the Photos app share sheet? What are they doing differently? Or have they been whitelisted by Apple to appear there?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 111

Answers (1)

yo1995
yo1995

Reputation: 637

I haven't tried and am also curious about this, but from a bit search it seems to be possible - See the screenshot in this repo: https://github.com/pexels/react-native-share-menu

The keywords and doc pages related to this functionality seem to be

Let me know if you actually implement this feature! I'm really curious how it works out.

I remember that iOS used to support editing video via iMovie with the share extension button, but since iOS 16 the button is gone… so maybe it is even too hard for Apple themselves to use this ancient API. 🫤

Upvotes: -1

Related Questions