MDN: Web Share API

MDN’s reference for the Web Share API.

License: CC BY-SA 2.5+ (Mozilla Contributors) — the same license family as Cognitive accessibility (MDN Web Docs) and the wiki’s ~60 Wikipedia sources.

Key points

• The overview page describes the API as letting a site share text, links, and files with a target the person selects, by way of the underlying operating system’s own sharing mechanisms — the system clipboard, email, contacts or messaging apps, or a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi channel — rather than a site-specific mechanism.
• The share() method page’s Security section states the method requires “transient activation”: it can only be invoked directly from a UI event like a button click, never triggered at an arbitrary point by a script. In practice this means a share action is always something the person deliberately started, never something that happens on its own.
• Left out as implementation detail per purpose.md: exact method syntax and parameters, the full permitted-file-extension list, the specific DOMException/TypeError cases (including a “hostile share” the browser itself may decline to honor), and the separate share_target web-app-manifest mechanism for registering a site as a receiving target for other apps’ shared content.

Cited In

Patterns

• Social Sharing