[doubled112]

The first time I used iOS I noticed a lot of things it considers "normal" are completely undiscoverable unless you know.

Swipe down from the top. No, the other top.

Click share, now click "find in page". Wait, that doesn't share at all?

[TeMPOraL]

"Share" is one of the worst inventions of all. What it does in phones is random across apps and platforms, and usually has nothing to do with what the word "share" means in any other context.

[butlike]

You're sharing data between apps. It's an app->app API, essentially. You can easily send an app store listing to your Reminders "Wishlist" section if you want, for example.

It's definitely not only social sharing.

[TeMPOraL]

I wasn't even thinking social. Problem is, the actual operation being done is one of:

- Give the other app a temporary/transient copy of a document or a file

- Give the other app the actual file (R/W)

- Give the other app the actual file but some other way (there's at least two in Android now, I believe?)

- Give the other app some weird-ass read-only lens into the actual file

- Re-encode the thing into something else and somehow stream it to the other app

- Re-encode the thing into something else and give it that (that's a lossy variant of transient copy case - example, contact info being encoded into textual "[Name] Blah\n[Mobile] [phone]" text/plain message).

- Upload it to cloud, give the other app a link

- Upload it to cloud, download it back, and give the other app a transient downloaded copy (?! pretty sure Microsoft apps do that, or at least that's what it feels when I try to "Share" stuff from that; totally WTF)

- Probably something else I'm missing.

You never really know which of these mechanisms will be used by a given app, until you try to "Share" something from it for the first time.

Now, I'm not saying the UI needs to expose the exact details of the process involved. But what it should do is to distinguish between:

1. Giving the other app access to the resource

2. Giving the other app an independent copy of the resource (and spell out if it's exact or mangled copy)

3. Giving the other app a pointer to the resource

In desktop terminology, this is the difference between Save As, Export and copying the file path/URL.

Also, desktop software usually gives you all three options. Mobile apps usually implement only one of them as "Share", so when you need one of the not chosen options, you're SOL.

[crazygringo]

If you think of it as "send" rather than "share" it makes a lot more conceptual sense. Don't get caught up on the word.

It's almost always to send the content somewhere, whether it's a platform, an app, the clipboard, etc.

Not always always, but almost always.

[NooneAtAll3]

I still despise whoever decided that swipe-from-top needs 2 versions somehow