
Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI - ahiknsr
https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/05/google-please-fix-androids-slow-bloated-share-ui/
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bastawhiz
I wish they would improve what suggestions they offer at the top of the menu.
It suggests slack channels I've never posted in, contacts I haven't messaged
in years, and apps that I've never shared to. Even just having a better
heuristic would make it 100x better.

~~~
ncallaway
If it just used the last 4 people I had shared a message with it would be such
a _massive_ improvement.

I feel like they're trying to do something extremely sophisticated and it's
coming out far far worse than if they were doing something extremely simple.

~~~
mgkimsal
Safari's url bar is problematic like that for me - half the time when I type
'fa' (starting to type facebook) - some place I've been minimally 30 times in
the last week, from that browser, it'll popup some blog (that stars with fab)
I visited once initially in 2015. The only reason I've ever been back to that
fab blog is because of muscle memory keystrokes hitting 'return' on safari's
flawed suggestion.

~~~
girvo
There’s a toggle in settings to disable it or remove that site, IIRC. I had
the same problem until I fixed it that way.

~~~
mgkimsal
sure, but... why on earth is it there in the first place? why, after years of
not going to a website, is it suddenly becoming the first suggestion, topping
sites I visit daily/hourly?

much like the android stuff in the original article, it's just broken, and is
a poor experience.

~~~
girvo
I wasn’t disagreeing with you! It’s annoying as hell. I just wanted to share
the fix I came across when I also hit this problem.

~~~
mgkimsal
Thanks :)

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edent
I wrote about this three years ago -
[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/08/sharing-on-android-is-
broke...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/08/sharing-on-android-is-broken/) \-
using mostly the same examples.

Google employees are mostly interested in building new stuff, not fixing
broken old stuff.

There's also no central design authority for Google's Android. Each team
implements the same thing in multiple different way.

Which is a shame, because there are plenty of people who would happily fix the
bugs in the open source version of Android - but Google doesn't accept
patches.

~~~
gerash
This is due to promotion incentives. There's a much higher chance of getting
promoted if you make up something new from scratch, stamp your name all over
it and then during performance review demonstrate how many users it impacted
so the committee promotes you. Often times people then move on to another team
right after the promotion, rinse and repeat.

Even though this issue has been acknowledged internally but the above strategy
is still the most promising when it comes to moving up the ladder.

~~~
Osiris
Maybe the ladder itself is the problem. What does a "promotion" for a software
engineer even mean?

~~~
jamaicahest
For some software engineers, a management position is considered a promotion.

------
dmix
The bug report on the Issue Tracker:
[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/68393945](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/68393945)

Outside of the UI consistency issue, simply caching the share link index would
largely fix the problem...

The UI consistency problem is the harder problem to solve and a common issue
across Android apps, although not anywhere near as bad as it used to be. Maybe
Google should publish some guidelines around share button placement? But I'm
not sure how that would work exactly... but Google should definitely lead the
way here (Youtube using a completely different icon is a great example).

~~~
bobthepanda
As far as I'm concerned, UI consistency only really matters within apps that
look the same. As far as the actual menu options, iOS apps use the native
share UI capabilities because it works well and behaves consistently; I'm sure
that if the Android one performed as consistently that developers would be
more likely to use it instead of being responsible for reinventing another
wheel.

------
fooker
Uninstall Slack and Messenger. You will instantly notice the difference, the
lag almost disappears.

This makes it seem like it is an amateur design issue, where callbacks are
perhaps being called much more often than they are needed. How often does your
'most contacted' list need to change anyway?

~~~
fareesh
I don't think it's limited to those two apps. I use neither of them and I
still have issues. Perhaps Whatsapp and hangouts add similar callback hell to
the widget?

~~~
oliwarner
Whatsapp certainly does.

They just need to implement some intent caching with invalidation callbacks
that active apps can call (or push updates to).

Seems so childishly simple from all the way up here, wonder why they haven't
done it already.

~~~
fooker
Because, at Google you do not get promoted if you make small incremental
improvements. Especially not if you work on something that does not easily
show up in metrics.

You need to launch flashy products and APIs to have the promo committee look
at your packet properly. Unsurprisingly, promo driven development ensues.

~~~
oliwarner
Google isn't the only stakeholder here. Users and app developers could
contribute improvements through AOSP.

Whether or not they'd see the light of day is another question, but it's
surprising that stupid issues like this aren't tackled more by the people
suffering.

~~~
fooker
Google's Android build does not use the sharing service used by AOSP, iirc.

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ufmace
I remember when Android first came out, the intents-based Share system seemed
revolutionary compared to how sharing worked on every other mobile OS. If it
had some rough edges, well, so did everything else in the OS. I think that
now, the rest of the OS has generally gotten smooth and polished enough that
the general lack of attention to the share system, aside from a few haphazard
tweaks, really sticks out as a sore spot. It's about time they showed the
share system some UI love. Unfortunately, it's probably too late to do much
for it now in the upcoming Android release.

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knaik94
It's "edge" cases like this that make me glad to be on android.

There has been a workaround for this with where you can customize the menu by
redirecting all share intents to a specific app __. There are cases where apps
don 't use the standard api for share intents, but in most cases this app
works as expected.

I agree Android should have a built in function that provides this level of
customization at the OS level. Google should also provide a uniform experience
with all apps however I don't mind the fragmentation because it merely a side
effect of backwards compatability. Specifically with Youtube, Google shows
that they have share intents in mind and are simply experimenting ways to
increase user engagement.

 __

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andmadesof...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andmadesoft.share)

\-----

I am not the author nor affiliated with the app in any way.

~~~
mistermann
There are better options if rooted, but Andmade is pretty darn good if you're
not. It does feel antiquated though.

~~~
wh-uws
Please share the other options. I gave up on andmade a while ago because the
UI badly needs a face lift.

~~~
czottmann
Fliktu is another one:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oakstar.fl...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oakstar.fliktu&hl=en)

------
js2
I'm glad to see that Android is just as frustrating as iOS... it's just a
completely different set of frustrations. (That's sarcasm). It boggles my mind
that two of the richest companies on the planet can't fix this stuff.

Here's my favorite iOS sharing frustration. Often I want to copy a link from
Safari. Click the share icon, select copy from the share widget, switch to
different app (or another Safari tab), tap paste. There's about a 50% chance
that what gets pasted is the URL vs what was previously on the clipboard. I
usually perform the share/copy step twice now before trying to paste but that
only seems to improve the odds. This bug has existed since at least iOS 9 and
occurs for me on multiple devices.

~~~
jamaicahest
>It boggles my mind that two of the richest companies on the planet can't fix
this stuff.

You're suggesting that they want to fix it at all, rather than build new,
shiny things.

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woolvalley
While we are at it, we could speed up iOS's slow share UI too. It's not that
hard to cache that kind of stuff.

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tonto
One place where there is no share button where there should be one is in the
"swipe right" news. It's a pretty ok news reader so why no ability to share
links? Maybe I missed it but when you hit the vertical "..." I just get a
minisurvey about the news source (e.g. hide all stories from blah, etc)
instead of a button to share. I sort of dislike going to the page and then
doing the in browser share link

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exabrial
It would be nice to enable/disable share targets somehow per application. The
question is how to do this in a UI that is powerful, but can provide a curated
'simple mode' for people like my parents.

And please, a headphone jack on the next pixel. Usb-c is awesome, keep that,
but everything from airplanes to cheap karaoke machines in China still will
forever use 1/8" jacks.

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scraft
Yes 100%. It is shocking how long it can take to bting up the share dialog and
no indication of progress so you can end up clicking again and that click then
gets passed to the share dialog when it finally comes up and starts sharing
somewhere completely inappropriately.

Sometimes I leave it for several seconds, no share dialog, so press it again,
but low and behold it was just taking a really long time. Othertimes I wait
and wait and wait and eventually conclude it isn't coming up after all.

After years of training you get better at sharing, very firm clear tap on
share and then wait 10 seconds. But then someone else uses my phone and I tell
them to share it for me and it goes horribly wrong and they can't quite
believe how bad it is, just as I get used to it.

Currently on a Samsung Galaxy S6 but I have had this issue on all Android
phones.

The order thing is insane, I wondered if this was all just my phone, maybe a
rogue app or bad firmware update, so relieving to hear this happens to others.

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nsns
There's a certain common expectation one has from any UI. This doesn't exist
for me with anything Google - be it search, Youtube, Android, etc. - my first
thought is always 'I'll need to fight it to get the results I'm looking for.'
That's how they roll.

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fuzzyoneuk
I dread everytime I accidentally hit the share button on any app, really does
need some work.

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senectus1
oh yes please.

also fix the fact that it moves and changes the order of things all the bloody
time. that drives me nuts!

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greatamerican
this stuff is also extremely slow on iOS.

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jahvo
Every time I've used Android every UI was bloated, slow and buggy. It's
surprising the author has found something in particular to complain about.

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matharmin
Is this really an issue for anyone? This seems like a whole lot of complaining
over functionality that actually works fairly well in my opinion.

~~~
mholt
Yes, it's real. And the lag often causes me to accidentally share to the wrong
place == really bad.

~~~
simsla
Same here. Interface elements still shifting around after a second is very bad
UX.

~~~
diggan
Ohyes, and this happens all over the web (looking at you Twitter) and even in
the browsers themselves, Firefox is the only browser whose results in the
address bar that doesn't jump around. Chrome and Safari are literally unusable
for me because of this.

