Some Apps Hide Your Sharing Options

Even if you’ve never thought about it, you’re probably very familiar with the built-in share sheet on your iPhone or Android. This menu appears when you want to share something with a contact or another app and usually offers a lot of options to choose from.

However, you may notice that at times the app does not allow you to use the regular iOS or Android shared sheets, but instead offers its own option. This may not bother you – as long as you can share what you want to share with those you want to share with, it’s all good, right? Well, not so much.

Why do applications have their own exchange sheets?

To be honest, it’s not entirely clear. But there are some key benefits to apps that offer users a proprietary sharing menu rather than one built into their smartphone OS.

First, the app can add certain features within the app that you won’t find in the promotions menu. Take a look at TikTok: when you hit the share button, there are a lot of options in the app’s dedicated sharing menu that you won’t find on the share sheets for iOS or Android. At the top, you have TikTok controls like Repost and Add to Story, but you also have the option to send a video to another TikTok user, which you can’t do with a share sheet. This option also keeps you on TikTok rather than prompting you to message someone outside of the app.

That doesn’t mean that TikTok won’t let you share with other apps: those options are located in the middle of its menu, with the option to share on Snapchat, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. You can also send a text video or copy the link. At the bottom, you’ll find more TikTok controls, including Report, Not Interested, and Save Video.

Flexibility in sharing and control options is probably one of the reasons for custom options, as is aesthetic: these share menus often have user interfaces that are much more in line with their host application than iOS or Android. The TikTok sharing menu looks like any other screen you’ll find on the TikTok app, as it does on YouTube and Instagram. The share menu in an app can be a product of design choice, like anything else.

In-app exchange sheets can track you

However, one of the creators of TikTok, Chris Carley, claims that apps use in-app share sheets for tracking purposes. In this TikTok , Carly claims that apps can track your sharing activities when using their share menu, as opposed to iOS or Android’s share options. TikTok may not know you shared this video on your Instagram story, or with a friend via text if you shared it from the built-in share sheet, but it can follow the same action using its own share menu.

I can’t find any information online to support this claim. First of all, no coverage compared the in-app sharing sheets to Apple’s or Google’s options. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find that such tracking is possible. We know that apps can track everything you do when you use their in-app browsers , so it’s always better to launch a link in your dedicated browser than stick with the default app setting. (I have reached out to TikTok to confirm Carly’s claims and will update the story if I get a response.)

You are missing out on great features by using an in-app exchange sheet.

Tracking questions aside, these stock sheets hide useful features built into stock share sheets that users won’t know exist unless they look for them.

Case in point: SharePlay, a great iOS feature that lets you share content with others while on a FaceTime call. Apps that support SharePlay should be obvious, because when you’re about to share something, you should see a big green “SharePlay” button at the ready. But, as Carly points out in another TikTok , since apps like TikTok and YouTube submit their share lists first, you never know they support SharePlay at all. But they do!

The same applies to AirDrop for iOS and Nearby Share for Android. Both features are not available from the in-app share menu and you will need to access the built-in share sheet to use them. Luckily, you can do this quite easily.

How to make the app show your phone’s built-in shared sheet

If you want to access the built-in share sheet to see if your app supports features like SharePlay, you’ll need to find a dedicated button for that. This button differs by app, but often it’s the More button: on TikTok, you need to tap the Share icon, then scroll all the way down to the middle row to find the More button, which opens iOS. ‘ and a generic Android sheet. The same applies to YouTube: you need to click on “Share” and then scroll to “More”. On iOS, you’ll find “SharePlay,” but you’ll find plenty of other sharing options on both iPhone and Android. Reddit at least doesn’t require you to scroll to click “More”.

However, Instagram is different: you need to click the share button and then select the share button.