Use Activity Views
Activity views (formerly known as the Share sheet) make it easy to share with others. You can not only share webpages through messages, email, and on social media, but you can also transfer a file (like a PDF displayed in Safari) to another app (like Books) or execute actions like searching a webpage or launching a shortcut. Here are the ins and outs of how activity views work in iOS and iPadOS.
Share with Activity Views
Whenever you can share content, you see a Share 
icon. Tap it to reveal the activity view, which displays two rows of buttons. Swipe left and right on each half to reveal more functionality. Tap a button on the sheet to perform that action (Figure 30).
What You Can Share
Here are some examples of what you can share with an activity view:
Webpages in Safari and other browsers
Images in the Photos app
Locations in Maps
Email attachments from Mail
Files from the Files app
Apple Music songs and playlists from Music (look for the
button)Almost anything else, so long as the developer has included activity view capabilities and you’ve enabled the extension—see Edit Activity Views later in the chapter
Activity views often conflate the idea of sharing with actions like copying and printing. For example, pull up the activity view in a note to reveal options to copy and print that note.
Share from the Photos App
Sharing photos and videos from the Photos app works a little differently than it does in most apps:
Select the photo or video you want to share.
Tap the Share
icon.Tap any additional photos and videos that you want to share. A checkmark
appears on selected items (Figure 31).
Figure 31: Photos lets you select multiple items to share. Tap the activity view extension you want to use, such as Messages, Mail, or iCloud Photo Sharing.
There are a few unique sharing options in the Photos app:
AirPlay: This broadcasts your photos and videos to an Apple TV without mirroring the entire screen. See my book Take Control of Apple TV for an in-depth look at AirPlay.
Copy iCloud Link: This creates a public repository of photos, which will expire after 30 days, but the recipients can choose to save the images permanently to their Photos library. This is useful for sharing one-off photos.
iCloud Photo Sharing: See iCloud Photo Sharing.
Slideshow: Display the selected photos in a slideshow.
Use as Wallpaper: Tap this to use the selected photo as the wallpaper of your Lock or Home screen.
See Get to Know Photos for more on managing your photos in iOS.
Edit Activity Views
You can rearrange the items in an activity view so you can reach them more easily:
Second row: Swipe all the way to the right, tap More, and then Edit. Add share actions to your favorites by tapping the plus
button, remove them with the minus 
button, or rearrange them with the grab handle 
. Favorites appear first in the list.Actions list: Scroll all the way down in the activity view and tap Edit Actions. Use the grab handle
to rearrange items and turn off their switches to remove them from the list.
Markup
The activity view often hides special functions that aren’t necessarily related to sharing, and I note some of those throughout this book. For example, there’s one terrific feature that you can find in many apps’ activity views: Markup 
, which creates a PDF copy of what you’re looking at and lets you annotate it. It’s available in Books, Notes, Photos, Safari, and more.
Tap Markup and whatever you’re viewing is opened up as a PDF that you can modify. There are three main controls here:
Tap Done to delete the PDF or save it to the Files app.
Tap the Share
icon to see the usual sharing items, as well as the option to save to the Files app.Tap the Markup
button to see markup options.The basic markup tools are pretty intuitive: fine-point marker, chisel-point marker, pencil, eraser, selection tool, ruler, and color selection. Tap the plus
button to reveal more options (Figure 32):Text: Tap Text to insert text, which you can adjust with the text settings
icon.Signature: Tap Signature to insert a signature, either synced from Preview or Mail on the Mac, or one you draw on screen.
Figure 32: Create PDF offers several tools to add a personal touch to images and webpages. Magnifier: Tap Magnifier to insert a magnifying loupe to highlight small elements. Drag the green handle around the loupe to adjust the magnification. Tap the shape
icon to adjust the magnifier outline.Square, circle, speech balloon, line tool: Tap the square, circle, speech balloon, or line tool to insert those shapes.