electron-native-share

Universal native Share API for Electron apps. Brings the OS share sheet to your desktop app — macOS NSSharingServicePicker, Windows DataTransferManager.

Install

npm install electron-native-share

Prebuilt binaries are included for macOS and Windows. No C++ compiler required for most users.

Usage

import { share, canShare } from 'electron-native-share';

// Check if native sharing is available on this platform
if (canShare()) {
  console.log('Native share sheet available');
}

// Share content (from Electron main process)
const result = await share({
  title: 'Check this out',
  text: 'Hello from my Electron app!',
  url: 'https://example.com',
});

console.log(result);
// { method: 'native' }

Sharing files

await share({
  title: 'My document',
  files: ['/absolute/path/to/document.pdf'],
});

With a specific BrowserWindow

Pass the Electron BrowserWindow instance as the second argument so the share sheet anchors to the correct window:

import { BrowserWindow } from 'electron';
import { share } from 'electron-native-share';

const win = new BrowserWindow({ width: 800, height: 600 });

await share({ text: 'Hello!' }, win);

API

canShare(): boolean

Returns true if native sharing is available on the current platform (macOS or Windows).

share(options, browserWindow?): Promise<ShareResult>

Opens the native share sheet with the given content.

Options:

| Property | Type | Description | | -------- | ---------- | ----------------------------------- | | title | string? | Share title | | text | string? | Text content to share | | url | string? | URL to share | | files | string[]?| Array of absolute file paths |

At least one of title, text, url, or files must be provided.

Returns: Promise<ShareResult>

interface ShareResult {
  method: 'native' | 'cancelled';
}

Throws an Error if native sharing is not available on the current platform. Use canShare() to check before calling.

getNativeWindowHandle(browserWindow): Buffer | undefined

Utility to extract the native window handle from an Electron BrowserWindow.

Platform Support

| Platform | Method | Status | | -------- | --------------------------------- | ------ | | macOS | NSSharingServicePicker | ✅ | | Windows | WinRT DataTransferManager | ✅ | | Linux | Not supported | — |

How it works

This library provides direct access to native OS share sheets. There are no silent fallbacks — if native sharing isn't available, share() throws so your app can decide how to handle it (show a message, copy to clipboard, etc.).

if (canShare()) {
  const result = await share({ text: 'Hello!' });
  // result.method is 'native' or 'cancelled'
} else {
  // Handle unsupported platform your way
  clipboard.writeText('Hello!');
  showToast('Copied to clipboard');
}

The install script uses node-gyp-build || exit 0, so native addon build failures are silently ignored. On unsupported platforms the addon simply won't load, and canShare() will return false.

Building from source

If prebuilt binaries aren't available for your platform:

npm run build        # Compile TypeScript + native addon
npm run build:ts     # TypeScript only
npm run build:native # Native addon only (requires C++ toolchain)

Requirements for building native addon

• macOS: Xcode command line tools
• Windows: Visual Studio with C++ Desktop workload + Windows 10 SDK

Example Electron App

A minimal example app is included in examples/electron-app/:

cd examples/electron-app
npm install
npm start

License

MIT