I love the share panel you get when you click the up-arrow in iOS or Mac.
But it has become an unmanageable junk drawer of stuff. Across the top I get the last 10(?) people I’ve texted to, even if I’ve only sent one message. I can’t seem to get my email recipients on it at all. The list of apps is mystifying but editable, in theory. I can’t take Books off. If I click on a photo in an email (as opposed to in Photos), I now also get iTerminal, iMovie and Snapseed that I can’t remove, and I get different list of people I rarely text. I managed to click on some of the message recipients and choose “Suggest Less Often” but who knows what that means.
This is such an incredibly useful tool I’m upset it’s not a cleaner interface. I see messages on Apple’s (useless) support page going back years on this stuff. Perhaps they’ve delegated the app settings to Siri. I’m just whining.
You may feel like you’re whining, but the plethora of posts on the Apple Support pages about this says you’re very much not alone.
I agree, the Share panel is a disorganized mess. There seems to be little predictability about which options will be available when or the order in which they appear. I also get suggestions of the last several people I’ve iMessaged with (but not SMS messaged), and never any email suggestions. Which actually annoys me, because I’m in the habit of emailing links to myself from my phone so I can follow them up later on my laptop. A suggestion would let me do it in two taps, but instead I have to take multiple steps to do it, every single time.
It’s long past time Apple fixed this, but I don’t see any evidence that it’s on their list at all.
Mine completely disappeared on my phone for a few weeks! I often share pix or videos from Photos and it’s nice to see my frequent contacts at a glance (mostly, because like someone mentioned, it can be anyone in the list)
Suddenly they were gone! I just had the buttons underneath but seem to remember the Messages button was more difficult to find.
Just as I was about to ask here they came back. I haven’t done any updates recently so I have no idea why they went away and came back, but I really used them a lot.
Diane
The setting for suggesting contacts is not at all obvious. But after iOS’ repeated failure to suggest the right people and turning my share sheet into a useless mess, I finally managed to find the setting to turn it off entirely. Now my share sheet shows just the apps and actions I have selected and in the order I choose.
Settings > Siri & Search > Suggestions From Apple > Show When Sharing
Not at all obvious that this is related to suggesting contacts in share sheets, but indeed, that is exactly what this setting does.
Woohoo! A (partial) solution!
Could you be more specific on how you got the share sheet to show only apps that you have selected? I have had the “Show When Sharing” turned off for as long as I can remember. If I select a photo in the Photos app and touch share, I still get a seemingly random list of apps including some that I have never used like Books and Journal. Instead, I have to touch More… every time to get to the app I want. iOS 17.5.1 on iPhone 13 Pro. Thank you.
You’re almost there.
While in More hit the Edit button at the top right. Turn off apps you never want to see. Change the order of those you want using the slider button to the right of the items under Favorites. When you’re pleased with your changes, hit Done at the top left.