With iOS 5, Apple introduced social media integration into its mobile OS, allowing users to quickly post Facebook statuses and tweets right from the Notification Center. For some reasons that only Apple knows, they pulled the feature with iOS 8. On the other hand, iOS developers are now able to develop widgets for the Notification Center. If you are looking for an easy way to share your thoughts to Facebook/Twitter, TapToShare allows you to do so with the Share Widget.
The aptly named widget TapToShare, once installed, settles right inside the Notification Center and matches Apple’s flat design as seen in the screenshots below. The widgets add shortcuts to both Facebook and Twitter in the Notification Center’s Today tab, and if you’re quite an avid social user, you’ll be pleased to have the buttons back.
Unfortunately, tapping on either one of these buttons won’t allow you to directly share something from the Notification Center. It will instead launch the app from where you can tweet or post away. A small inconvenience, but hey, it’s better than having no button at all, isn’t it?
The widget also allows you to share your location and select your FB post’s audience in addition to the text you choose to post, which is a really nice feature. Although we’d like to see support for other social networks in the future, a quick widget for emailing or text messaging someone wouldn’t be bad either.
Once you’ve downloaded the TapToShare widget from the App Store, simply follow the steps below to add it to your Notification Center:
Open up the Notification Center on your iOS 8 device by swiping down from the top of the screen.
In the Today tab, scroll down and tap on the “Edit” button.
Tap on the green + button to add the “TapToShare” widget to the Today view in the Notification Center. Once done, the buttons will show up in the Notification Center.
Note: Make sure you’ve logged into your Facebook and Twitter accounts via the Settings app in iOS (Settings -> Facebook; Settings -> Twitter)
Download it, be sure to try it, and as ever, post your thoughts in the comments section below.
Shujaa Imran is MakeTechEasier’s resident Mac tutorial writer. He’s currently training to follow his other passion become a commercial pilot. You can check his content out on Youtube
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