Share like a native app with the Web Share API
Web apps can use the same system-provided share capabilities as native apps.
With the Web Share API, web apps are able to use the same system-provided share capabilities as native apps. The Web Share API makes it possible for web apps to share links, text, and files to other apps installed on the device in the same way as native apps.
Sharing is only half of the magic. Web apps can also be share targets, meaning they can receive data, links, text, and files from native or web apps. See the Receive shared data post for details on how to register your app as a share target.
Concepts and usage
Capabilities and limitations
Web share has the following capabilities and limitations:
- It can only be used on a site that supports HTTPS.
- It must be invoked in response to a user action such as a click. Invoking it
through the
onloadhandler is impossible. - It can share, URLs, text, or files.
- As of mid 2020, it is only available on Safari and on Android in Chromium forks. See MDN for details.
Sharing links and text
To share links and text, use the share() method, which is a promise-based
method with a required properties object.
To keep the browser from throwing a TypeError,
the object must contain at least one
of the following properties: title, text, url or files. You
can, for example, share text without a URL or vice versa. Allowing all three
members expands the flexibility of use cases. Imagine if after running the code
below, the user chose an email application as the target. The title parameter
might become the email subject, the text, the message body, and the files, the
attachments.
if (navigator.share) {
navigator.share({
title: 'web.dev',
text: 'Check out web.dev.',
url: 'https://web.dev/',
})
.then(() => console.log('Successful share'))
.catch((error) => console.log('Error sharing', error));
}If your site has multiple URLs for the same content, share the page's
canonical URL instead of the current URL. Instead of sharing
document.location.href, you would check for a canonical URL <meta> tag in
the page's <head> and share that. This will provide a better experience to the
user. Not only does it avoid redirects, but it also ensures that a shared URL serves
the correct user experience for a particular client. For example, if a friend
shares a mobile URL and you look at it on a desktop computer,
you should see a desktop version:
let url = document.location.href;
const canonicalElement = document.querySelector('link[rel=canonical]');
if (canonicalElement !== null) {
url = canonicalElement.href;
}
navigator.share({url: url});Sharing files
To share files, first test for and call navigator.canShare(). Then include an
array of files in the call to navigator.share():
if (navigator.canShare && navigator.canShare({ files: filesArray })) {
navigator.share({
files: filesArray,
title: 'Vacation Pictures',
text: 'Photos from September 27 to October 14.',
})
.then(() => console.log('Share was successful.'))
.catch((error) => console.log('Sharing failed', error));
} else {
console.log(`Your system doesn't support sharing files.`);
}Notice that the sample handles feature detection by testing for
naviagator.canShare() rather than for navigator.share().
The data object passed to canShare() only supports the files property.
Image, video, audio, and text files can be shared. (See
Permitted File Extensions in Chromium.)
More file types may be added in the future.
Santa Tracker case study
Santa Tracker, an open-source project, is a holiday tradition at Google. Every December, you can celebrate the season with games and educational experiences.
In 2016, the Santa Tracker team used the Web Share API on Android. This API was a perfect fit for mobile. In previous years, the team disabled share buttons on mobile because space is at a premium, and they couldn't justify having several share targets.
But with the Web Share API, they were able to present just one button, saving precious pixels. They also found that users shared with Web Share around 20% more than users without the API enabled. Head to Santa Tracker to see Web Share in action.