![]() ![]() ![]() If your extension does something like upload a file, an activity that could potentially take several minutes depending on your file's size and connection speed, developers are encouraged to have their extensions pass that task to the system so that the extension can be closed more quickly. Developers can define the kinds of data that their extensions can work with, so if a person taps the Share button on a text document they get a list of apps that can work with text documents, not audio or image editors.Įxtensions are designed to have a short life-cycle-they open, do their job, and then close almost immediately afterward to conserve system resources (a necessity for low-end devices with 512MB of RAM, which are already pretty resource-starved). If a developer wants to include a widget, a Share extension, and an Action extension all within the same app, that's perfectly fine. The containing app doesn't have to be particularly elaborate-the third-party keyboards we used came in containing apps that were mostly just basic text editors along with some keyboard settings-but it can't just be a function-free splash screen or something.Įach extension is something of a mini-app unto itself, and containing apps can harbor multiple extensions. In other words, developers can't release an extension that is just an extension. The biggest restriction on iOS extensions is that they must come bundled in a standard app (a "containing app," in Apple's words), and that application actually has to do something. Even though Apple's extensions aren't as flexible as what you'll find in Android or even OS X, they address the most common iOS pain points and make it much easier for people to customize certain things about the way their iPhones and iPads work. Your default browser will always be Safari addresses you tap will always open up in Apple Maps your default camera app will always be Apple's camera app. ![]() Most notably, there's no option for replacing Apple's default, built-in apps with others that perform the same task. Apple does place some limitations on what these keyboards can do, though.įurther Reading Explaining iOS 8’s extensions: Opening the platform while keeping it secureThere are still some pretty big areas of the operating system that third-parties can't extend. Custom keyboard extensions replace the default Apple software keyboard with a new third-party one.One could, for example, use Dropbox to store documents that you can then open and edit in Office for iPad or Pages. Storage Provider extensions will let productivity apps open documents from a variety of cloud services.Photos keeps both the edited image and the unedited original, though this isn’t true for video files. Photo Editing extensions can be used to take a picture you're viewing in Photos and call upon features from another app to edit it (Apple showed off a VSCO Cam extension in its WWDC keynote).Action extensions "manipulate or view content within the context of another app." In English, that means editing a photo embedded in a text document or, as Apple showed onstage in the WWDC keynote, using something like Bing Translate to translate the text in a Safari window.Older versions of iOS support posting to Facebook and Twitter, and Share extensions open up the doors to others. This will enable things like posting pictures to Pinterest or uploading files from an app into Dropbox or OneDrive. Share extensions allow for the posting of photos, links, or other files from one app to an online service.Think of them as an answer to Windows Phone's Live Tiles or Android's home screen widgets. Today extensions, also called widgets, are used to deliver glanceable information in the Today view in the Notification Center.If you're creating an iOS extension in Xcode, these are your options: Apple has defined six different "extension points" in iOS 8, areas where developers are allowed to add functionality. Extensions remove some (but not all) of those barriers. ![]()
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