Basic example for sharing text or image with UIActivityViewController in Swift

Question

I started my search by wanting to know how I could share to other apps in iOS  I discovered that two important ways are    UIActivityViewController UIDocumentInteractionController   These and other methods are compared in this SO answer    Often when I am learning a new concept I like to see a basic example to get me started  Once I get something basic set up I can modify it how I like later    There are many SO questions related to UIActivityViewController  but I couldn t find any that were just asking for a simple example  Since I just learned how to do this  I will provide my own answer below  Feel free to add a better one  or an Objective-C version

User · Accepted Answer

UIActivityViewController Example Project

Set up your storyboard with two buttons and hook them up to your view controller (see code below).

Add an image to your Assets.xcassets. I called mine "lion".

Code

import UIKit
class ViewController: UIViewController {

    // share text
    @IBAction func shareTextButton(_ sender: UIButton) {

        // text to share
        let text = "This is some text that I want to share."

        // set up activity view controller
        let textToShare = [ text ]
        let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: textToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
        activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view // so that iPads won't crash

        // exclude some activity types from the list (optional)
        activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = [ UIActivityType.airDrop, UIActivityType.postToFacebook ]

        // present the view controller
        self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)

    }

    // share image
    @IBAction func shareImageButton(_ sender: UIButton) {

        // image to share
        let image = UIImage(named: "Image")

        // set up activity view controller
        let imageToShare = [ image! ]
        let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: imageToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
        activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view // so that iPads won't crash

        // exclude some activity types from the list (optional)
        activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = [ UIActivityType.airDrop, UIActivityType.postToFacebook ]

        // present the view controller
        self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
    }

}

Result

Clicking "Share some text" gives result on the left and clicking "Share an image" gives the result on the right.

Notes

I retested this with iOS 11 and Swift 4. I had to run it a couple times in the simulator before it worked because it was timing out. This may be because my computer is slow.
If you wish to hide some of these choices, you can do that with excludedActivityTypes as shown in the code above.
Not including the popoverPresentationController?.sourceView line will cause your app to crash when run on an iPad.
This does not allow you to share text or images to other apps. You probably want UIDocumentInteractionController for that.

You may use the following functions which I wrote in one of my helper class in a project   just call   showShareActivity msg  message   image  nil  url  nil  sourceRect  nil     and it will work for both iPhone and iPad  If you pass any view s CGRect value by sourceRect it will also shows a little arrow in iPad   func topViewController  - gt  UIViewController      var topViewController UIViewController   UIApplication shared keyWindow  rootViewController       while   topViewController presentedViewController     nil            topViewController   topViewController presentedViewController              return topViewController    func showShareActivity msg String   image UIImage   url String   sourceRect CGRect        var objectsToShare    AnyObject         if let url   url           objectsToShare    url as AnyObject             if let image   image           objectsToShare    image as AnyObject             if let msg   msg           objectsToShare    msg as AnyObject             let activityVC   UIActivityViewController activityItems  objectsToShare  applicationActivities  nil      activityVC modalPresentationStyle    popover     activityVC popoverPresentationController  sourceView   topViewController   view     if let sourceRect   sourceRect           activityVC popoverPresentationController  sourceRect   sourceRect            topViewController   present activityVC  animated  true  completion  nil

User · Answer

I ve used the implementation above and just now I came to know that it doesn t work on iPad running iOS 13  I had to add these lines before present   call in order to make it work    avoiding to crash on iPad if let popoverController   activityViewController popoverPresentationController        popoverController sourceRect   CGRect x  UIScreen main bounds width   2  y  UIScreen main bounds height   2  width  0  height  0       popoverController sourceView   self view      popoverController permittedArrowDirections   UIPopoverArrowDirection rawValue  0      That s how it works for me  func shareData   dataToShare   Any             let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  dataToShare  applicationActivities  nil             exclude some activity types from the list  optional            activityViewController excludedActivityTypes                   UIActivity ActivityType postToFacebook                        avoiding to crash on iPad         if let popoverController   activityViewController popoverPresentationController               popoverController sourceRect   CGRect x  UIScreen main bounds width   2  y  UIScreen main bounds height   2  width  0  height  0              popoverController sourceView   self view             popoverController permittedArrowDirections   UIPopoverArrowDirection rawValue  0                     self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil

User · Answer

I found this to work flawlessly if you want to share whole screen    IBAction func shareButton   sender  Any         let bounds   UIScreen main bounds     UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions bounds size  true  0 0      self view drawHierarchy in  bounds  afterScreenUpdates  false      let img   UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext       UIGraphicsEndImageContext       let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems   img    applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view     self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil

User · Answer

Share   Text     IBAction func shareOnlyText   sender  UIButton        let text    This is the text           let textShare     text       let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  textShare   applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view      self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil        Share   Image   IBAction func shareOnlyImage   sender  UIButton        let image   UIImage named   Product       let imageShare     image        let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  imageShare   applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view      self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil       Share   Text - Image - URL       IBAction func shareAll   sender  UIButton        let text    This is the text          let image   UIImage named   Product       let myWebsite   NSURL string  https   stackoverflow com users 4600136 mr-javed-multani tab profile       let shareAll   text   image    myWebsite      let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  shareAll  applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view      self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil

[ios] Basic example for sharing text or image with UIActivityViewController in Swift

UIActivityViewController Example Project

Code

Result

Notes

See also

Examples related to ios

Examples related to swift

Examples related to uiactivityviewcontroller