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Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

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Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#41

Post by bobthepanda »

dmix wrote: post #14

The bug report on the Issue Tracker: 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…

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.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#42

Post by 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

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#43

Post by netsharc »

matharmin wrote: post #2

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.

On my phone the share menu is very fast, but every time I open it, the icons are all over the place...

I like to watch YouTube on Kodi, there's an Android app which can be used as a remote control, and load URLs into the playlist. In binge mode I see the related videos and think "Oh that also looks interesting", so I "share" a lot of videos within a few seconds. Video 1, hit share, look for the remote control app icon, press it, done. Second video, hit share, hunt for the icon because it has moved... Same thing every time! Luckily my phone is quick enough that the share menu doesn't take forever to load, and I've accepted that the icons move around, only quietly swearing "Stupid programmers" every time, but it's still stupid.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#44

Post by danShumway »

ncallaway wrote: post #17
bastawhiz wrote: post #16

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.

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.

> 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.

This sums up my experience with a huge portion of the Google ecosystem. It's not just Google, of course, but Google particularly sticks out.

It feels like Google really likes to be clever, and just never had anyone take them aside and explain that clever solutions are usually bad. Sometimes I wonder if that extends to their codebases as well as their products; I'd love to be a fly on the wall and hear the conversations that are leading to some of the decisions they make.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#45

Post by gerash »

edent wrote: post #21

I wrote about this three years ago - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/08/sharing-on-android-is-broke... - 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 happi…

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.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#46

Post by 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.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#47

Post by 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.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#48

Post by mgkimsal »

ncallaway wrote: post #17
bastawhiz wrote: post #16

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.

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.

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.

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#49

Post by mgkimsal »

bastawhiz wrote: post #20
ncallaway wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. There are Slack channels that I share to almost every day that never show up at all. I don't know what they're doing, but it's an obvious failure.

well... "obvious" in what way? you're still sharing, right? essentially, we're still putting up with crappy systems because there's little other choice. And... if you stoped using it... what conclusion do they draw from that?

Re: Google, please fix Android's slow, bloated share UI

#50

Post by Osiris »

gerash wrote: post #45
edent wrote: post #21

I wrote about this three years ago - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/08/sharing-on-android-is-broke... - 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 happi…

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 a…

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