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Android 12 will spell the end of third-party share sheet replacements
Google's latest attempt to hinder the sharing experience on Android
It's no secret that Google has struggled to implement a satisfactory share sheet in Android — you could say it's been one of the platform's weakest features. Even now, when I attempt to share something with a friend, I'm greeted by direct share targets of no use whatsoever. Either that or you get an app's custom sharing menu instead, with varying degrees of usefulness. Because of this inconsistent experience, many users like to replace the default share sheet using a third-party app like Sharedr. Unfortunately, as of Android 12, that's no longer going to be possible.
One of the worst features in Android for a few years now has been the Sharesheet, the UI that pops up when you hit the share button in an app. In trying to offer you the most convenient and contextual sharing options every time it loads, the menu became incredibly slow and would infuriatingly update as you were about to make a selection. Google made some changes in Android 10 that have resulted in a better, faster sharing experience.
Google Podcasts is pretty widely regarded as lacking in features its competition has — notably, you can't mark multiple episodes as played at once or set the app to automatically download new episodes of shows you're subscribed to — but it's gradually improving. Case in point: the app can now generate links to podcasts and shows for easy sharing.
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- The Inbox Chrome extension now seems to have disappeared from the Web Store, rather ominously.
Even though Inbox by Gmail has always been a testing ground for Google's main email client, many users now prefer it — myself included. It was already dismaying to see the removal of certain snooze options (place and someday) in June, but now it looks like the 'Save to Inbox' sharing option on Android has been axed as well.