Twitter and Facebook have been built into the iPhone and iPad for a while, but thanks to sharing extensions in iOS 8, you can now quickly and easily send your photos, videos, comments, and other content to any social network or online service you use, from any app you happen to be using. All you have to do is install and enable the share extension, tap the share button, and choose the extension you want to use. Best of all, share extensions have already been implemented by a bunch of great apps. Here are some of our favorites!
Pinterest is a social network that lets you collect all the stuff that interests you all in one place — ideas, stuff, links, whatever! You get to carefully curate your pins, and anyone whose interested in them gets to follow along and enjoy them. With the share extension, you can easily add pins from Safari, Photos, or any similar app with a share button.
- Free - Download now
Tumblr
Tumblr is an incredibly popular social network that lets you log whatever you like both for yourself and for all the people who like you. We use it from time to time to make fun of ourselves, and thanks to the share extension, we can easily log images, text, and articles from Photos, Notes, Safari, or any similar app with a touch of the share button.
- Free - Download now
Buffer
We use Buffer to craft and schedule iMore's posts to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. On the desktop it has a plugin. Thanks to the share extension, though, we can grab any image or link from Photos or Safari, or similar apps with the share button, and get it crafted and scheduled every bit as easily.
- Free - Download now
Storehouse
Storehouse lets you swiftly and elegantly assemble visual stories. Thanks to it's amazing interface, it's already lightning-quick at what it does. With the share extension, however, you can grab pictures and video right from the Photos app and, with a tap of the share button, send it straight on up to your story.
- Free - Download now
Pocket is a read-later app that lets you save text, photos, and videos — including the latest movie trailers! — to the service so you can peruse or view them whenever you have the time and the mood strikes you. With the share extension, you can send images, photos, articles, and more from Photos, Safari, Notes, and similar apps with a share button.
- Free - Download now
Slack
Slack is what we use for our virtual office. It keeps all connected and coordinated despite living cities, countries, and continents apart. It has meeting rooms and direct messages, and it lets you upload images. With the share extension, you can do that straight from the Photos app or any similar app with a share button.
- Free - Download now
Fantastical
Fantastical has always made it ridiculously easy to add events and appointments to your calendar. With the share extension, however, they've made it ridiculously easier! Just select a date in Safari or any similar app with a share button, tap that share button, and you'll be able to send it straight to Fantastical.
- $4.99 - Download now
Instapaper
Instapaper is read-later app that lets you save articles — like long reviews! — and other blobs of text to the service so that you can retrieve them on your iPhone or other device, or on the web, whenever it's convenient. With the share extension, you can send those articles or blobs of text to Instapaper from Safari, Notes, or any other app with writing and a share button.
- Free - Download now
Drafts
Drafts has always been an amazing way to time-shift your text. Write it at your leisure and then send it where you want, when you want. With the share extension, however, you can now take text from Notes or any similar app and with a tap of the share button, send it right to Drafts.
- $9.99 - Download now
Evernote
Evernote is just one of the places we like to keep all the stuff we collect every day. It's available online and on all platforms, and it can clip a wide and useful array of content types. With the share extension, Evernote can do that clipping from Photos, Safari, Notes, and any similar app with the share button.
- Free - Download now
Snapchat
Make all the "sext" jokes you want, but for a wide range of people and groups, Snapchat has become an important way to share images and videos of what they're doing. With the share extension, you can take those images and videos right from the Photos app and, with a tap of the share button, snap them straight into a chat.
- Free - Download now
Transmit
Transmit for iOS, from the fine folks at Panic who've been making Transmit for Mac for years, uses iCloud Drive and storage providers to bring file management and transfer to the iPhone. Best of all, with the share extension, you can grab those files from any app with the share button and send them to any server you have setup.
- $9.99 - Download now
Day One
Day One lets you journal your life. Whether that's your daily musings or a once-in-a-lifttime experience, it'll take any link, text, or image you can throw at it and keep it safe until you want to look back at it days, months, or even years later. With the share extension, you can journal all of that right from Safari, Notes, Photos, or any similar app with a share button.
- $4.99 - Download now
Group Text+
Group Text+ makes it incredibly convenient to send quick iMessages or SMS to people or groups you care about. Thanks to the share extension, you can even start those messages from within Notes, Safari, Photos or any similar app with a share button, and send them straight to any contacts you've set up.
- $2.99 - Download now
Your favorites?
Those are the share extensions we've got installed on our iPhones, but we're always on the lookout for more! So, let us know — which share extensions are your favorites and, if we forgot any, which ones do we need to add?
