[Feature Request]: Support MacOS native share extensions

[pszypowicz]

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a feature request that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Problem Description

I would like to use a built-in feature in MacOS to share content with an electron app.

for example: sharing a file from finder (file explorer) to a signal (communicator app which uses electron)

Proposed Solution

There is a developer guide to implement it on MacOS:
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/extensions/share-extensions/

Alternatives Considered

I'm not aware of alternative

Additional Information

It is not a duplicate of #6330 which was about sharing content from the electron app to other apps.

Two messaging applications: Element and Signal were discussing this and came to the same conclusion:
vector-im/element-desktop#737
signalapp/Signal-Desktop#1905

[nitram9]

This would be really convenient!

[rgk1]

Completely agree, would love to see this.

[cbroad]

I've been attempting to do this by building a share extension as part of an xcode project and then side loading the extension (appex) into my electron-builder package like some sort of chimera. When built, the xcode project was being added to the share menu. When combined with the electron project, it was not.

The Share Extension needs to be written in Swift or Objective-C. I don't see anyway that this could be built into Electron using Javascript. It's my understanding that a Share Extension is be unable to launch other programs or communicate directly with the parent-app. It's designed to work with remote service APIs. It can use some shared system resources (such as keychain) which should allow for passing of tokens from the main app to the extension. I believe it would also be able to use App Group resources. These things would involve writing node-native code in order for electron to access shared resources. I guess that part might be incorporable into electron in some way.

This link explains the lifecycle of an extension and explains that extensions can't open the containing app.
"A Today widget (and no other app extension type) can ask the system to open its containing app by calling the [openURL:completionHandler:] method of the [NSExtensionContext] class."
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/ExtensionOverview.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014214-CH2-SW2

In this link see "Sharing Data with Your Containing App"
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/ExtensionScenarios.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014214-CH21-SW1

So far, I've yet to have my project work with the included share extension. In addition to including a tested ".appex" package in the Plugins folder, I've tried to match metadata (Info.plist), include frameworks in my package, and match apple API versions as close as possible between the xcode project and my electron package. I've yet to have anything recognized by the system as a share extension.

Has anyone else tried anything? Any success stories?

[ngie-eign]

@cbroad: Has anyone else tried anything? Any success stories?

I haven't personally done it, but others might have had success in this area. I would check out this StackOverflow post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/76420958 .

signalapp/Signal-Desktop#1905 (comment) has some other ideas/discussion, which may help 🤷...

[cbroad]

Lol. I'm very familiar with that stackoverflow post. I wrote it. Do you know if anyone on the signal team is actually working on this? Sharing is definitely feasible, but requires some coordination between processes.

[ngie-eign]

Lol. I'm very familiar with that stackoverflow post. I wrote it. Do you know if anyone on the signal team is actually working on this? Sharing is definitely feasible, but requires some coordination between processes.

Lol... derp!

I sadly don't know anyone that's doing the work. I wish I had better news :/.

This problem's funny because Signal-iOS's Share Extension works perfectly fine under iOS!

[cbroad]

I don't know what they're using to do the iOS app, but I guarantee it's not Electron, and just because they look the same from the outside it doesn't mean that Apple implemented them in the same manner.

I don't use signal, but I could probably be helpful if someone official wanted to work on this feature request. It's complicated enough of a feature that I don't think I (or they) would want me to try to unilaterally add it to the mature code base without at the very least discussing how it would work and how it would complicate their build process with the powers that be.

[yorkshirelandscape]

Does anyone know of an open-sourced electron app that has implemented this? I know that Slack and Discord have both managed it, but I don't think their codebase is publicly available. I stand corrected. They appear not to have. Somehow I'd convinced myself otherwise.

[ExtRIELICi]

Any updates?