Google’s mobile operating system is maturing, Android 13 was not a revolution but a refinement of the features and design presented in previous versions. This strategy will continue in Android 14, establishing some of the foundations already established. Even so, there are aspects that can be improved, and one of them is the share menu.
On Android, when we go to share content from an application, a menu is displayed to perform this action. However, many applications still they keep their way of sharing create a sense of inconsistency in the system.
The problem with the share menu
According to Esper, the well-known Android developer blog, Android 14 will integrate a share menu for all applicationsthus solving the inconsistency and confusion generated by having several ways to share the content of our favorite applications.
But first we need to know How the system works. The bone intentions they are how Android manages the sharing of content between applications, for example when opening a PDF file, the system will show us the applications compatible with this format, allowing us to choose which one we want to use.
The share menu works the same way, but we understand better with an example. When we share an image from Google Photos, the system shows us the applications compatible with the image formats, however, many applications ignore this option by using their own sharing menu, different from what Android offers.
The design inconsistency between the different share menus is obvious.
This problem comes from a while ago and it is that up to android 10 this share sheet was really slow. Until then, every time we opened this feature, the system tracked the apps on each invocation. This is the main reason why many applications have designed their own sheet thus avoiding the slowness of the native solution. Developers want to provide a good user experience, and they consider the way the system manages it to be inefficient.
With Android 14, Google wants to fix this problem
Thankfully that has changed, but still many developers still include this custom solution which lacks some native menu functionality. As we can see in the screenshot below, the same Google apps still have custom menus, but they allow us to access the system share sheet by pressing the “More” button.
Google Photos has a custom sharing menu. If we click on “More” we will see the native solution.
Also, many apps like Twitter have their own menu in order to add certain actions within the same app, but it is not necessary. The native sharing section includes elements called Direct targets that allow an application to add actions to it.
With the arrival of Android 13 QPR1, a new addition related to this has been detected. There is a new application called “Intent Resolver”, which is nothing more than a substitute for the two functions we were talking about at the beginning: the one to share and the one to open files with different applications.
It seems that Google’s intention is add this application as a scalable item via modules, in true Project Mainline style. As we can see in the video below, this separate system app looks like the current menu.
With this separate element of the system, Google could experiment and add more features to satisfy all app developers, which makes the system even more consistent. There is no doubt that Google has thought about it and it is one of the sections that still has a facelift.
With the release of Android 14 on the horizon, soon we will know more about the system which will continue to improve the user experience. Google’s operating system continues to evolve.
Through | Esper Blog
