Easy sharing of your content with the Web Share API
Discover how the Web Share API can improve your content sharing by providing users with a seamless and consistent experience when sharing content from web applications.
Looking for ways to make your content more easily shareable by users? Learn how to use the Web Share API to add share buttons to your website or PWA so users can easily share your content on their favourite social media platforms, send emails and more!
What is the Web Share API?
As a digital professional, you are probably familiar with the Web Share API, a handy tool that allows users to easily share content from a web application to other apps on their device. But did you know that the Web Share API actually moves content sharing from the browser to the operating system (OS)?
How does the Web Share API work?
Traditionally, content sharing was a task performed by the browser. When a user clicked a share button on a website, the browser opened a share menu with options for sharing content on social media, sending emails or copying a link.
But with the Web Share API, content sharing is now moved from the browser to the operating system (OS). This means that when a user clicks on a share button, the browser no longer manages the share menu itself, but uses the device's operating system to open the share menu.
What are the advantages of the Web Share API?
This has a number of advantages. First, it means that the share menu looks the same as the share menu used in other apps on the device, creating a consistent user experience. Second, users can now use all available sharing options on their device, not just those available in the browser. Third, it makes for a better experience because the share button takes up much less space.
This means that if, for example, a user uses a social media platform that is not available as a share option in the browser, but is available as an app on the device, it can now easily be used to share content from a web application using the Web Share API.
The disadvantage is that support is not yet complete. For example, Chrome for MacOS does not support it and you either have to omit it or come up with an alternative
Main point
The main point to remember is that the Web Share API moves content sharing from the browser to the operating system (OS), giving users a seamless and consistent experience when sharing content from web applications. It provides a standardised way to add share buttons to websites and web applications, making sharing content much easier for users and improving the overall user experience.
