---
name: Share sheet
slug: share-sheet
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: The system panel of destinations and actions for sending the current
  item elsewhere, populated by whatever apps are installed.
aliases:
  - name: activity view
    source: hig
  - name: share dialog
    source: community
  - name: share menu
    source: community
  - name: web share
    source: community
tags:
  - menus
  - platform-registers
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - action-sheet
    - qr-code
    - copy-button
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - context-menu
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: Apple Human Interface Guidelines
    url: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the system panel for sending something onward
---

The share sheet is the one panel in an app that the app did not write. Your code hands
the system an item (a link, an image, a file) and the system decides what the reader can
do with it, drawing a row of destinations from the apps actually installed on that device
and a list of actions from whatever extensions have registered. Two phones running the
same app show different sheets, and neither list is yours to curate.

That authorship is the whole difference from an [action sheet](/action-sheet). An action
sheet holds choices the app itself wrote for something the reader has already started:
delete, duplicate, discard. A share sheet holds destinations the system supplied for
something the reader wants to send onward. They often use the same shape, a panel rising
from the bottom edge over a dimmed screen, which is why the two names get swapped, but
one is a menu and the other is a directory. A [bottom sheet](/bottom-sheet) is the shape
alone, with no claim about what is in it, and a [context menu](/context-menu) is the same
question asked in place rather than in a panel.

Apple's formal name for it is the activity view, which nobody says out loud, and its
contents are activities: system ones like Copy and Print, app ones like Messages and Mail,
and third-party extensions. Android calls the same thing a share sheet and builds it from
an intent. On the web the Web Share API opens the platform's real sheet from a page, which
is why a website can now put an item into someone's messaging app without knowing which
one it is, and why the call has to happen inside a user gesture.

Design around the parts you do control. Give the sheet a good preview of the item, since
that preview is what the reader checks before sending; give the system a title and a URL
worth showing; and never rebuild the sheet yourself with a hand-picked row of brand icons.
A homemade share row goes stale the moment someone installs something new, cannot reach
the apps the reader actually uses, and quietly turns a system affordance into a marketing
placement.