Sharing

Latest Vine update brings Snap to Beat feature and new audio discovery tools

Twitter-owned Vine has rolled out two major new features to its mobile app which are aimed at improving audio discovery and help “bring the magic of perfect-looping music to everyone.”

For starters, a brand new Snap to Beat feature lets you create Vines with With seamless audio looping. And in an effort to make music a core part of Vine, users can now take advantage of enhancements like a new Featured Tracks section and another new feature that allows them to find out what they're listening to as they watch Vines.

Save links for later with Pinterest’s much improved Share extension

Pinterest's Share extension on iPhones, iPod touches and iPads has gotten a whole lot more useful in the latest update which just landed on the App Store.

The free of charge application was among the first on the App Store to have rolled out a native Share sheet extension on iOS 8, albeit sporting a very limited set of features.

With the new, much improved Pinterest button for iPhone, you can now save links for later in a more visual way than before, with customizable Pin descriptions and more.

Skype for iPhone updated with location sharing

Skype for iPhone has picked up the ability to share a location with others in its latest update in the App Store.

The Microsoft-owned VoIP program was bumped to version 5.14 Monday to make it trivial to share your current geographical location, or your favorite place, with friends and family using the paperclip icon in the chat window. Moreover, this edition of Skype introduces unspecified improvements.

The new version of Skype arrived hot on the heels of a recent update which brought out handy web link previews in the chat window and replying with dictation on Apple Watch.

iOS 9 includes a share action for saving PDFs to iBooks

There's still no native option to print to PDF in iOS, but a new iOS 9 feature might the next best thing. Featured prominently in the share sheet of Apple's upcoming mobile OS update, is a new Save PDF to iBooks Activity. This new option allows users to easily turn a webpage or other document into a PDF in seconds.

BitTorrent Shoot moves batches of large media files between iOS, Android and Windows Phone

In this age of government-sponsored attacks on our privacy and eavesdropping of our digital exchanges, incredibly weak security in most sharing apps frustrates me. Unless you use iMessage or select few services, the spooks can pretty easily intercept those nude shots as they're being uploaded.

So why take the risk and not opt for the device-to-device sharing method, whenever possible?

While iOS's AirDrop feature is great, it leaves a lot to be desired. AirDrop isn't very reliable, doesn't cope well with large media files and is unavailable on other platforms, making direct photo sharing with an Android friend mostly a pipe dream.

Enter BitTorrent, one of the most common protocols for transferring large files. Based on peer-to-peer technology, their new mobile app called Shoot can help you share batches of photos and video directly between multiple devices, no matter what device you use or what network you’re on.

As it bypasses the cloud, utilizes encryption and was built from the ground up on top of the proven BitTorrent Sync engine, Shoot can move gigabytes of files easily and securely so your data remains completely private.

Facebook releases Moments for iPhone, a brand new private photo-sharing app

Billed as a private way to share photos with friends and an easy way to get all the photos of yourself trapped on your friends' phones, Moments for iPhone by Facebook is now available for download in the App Store.

Following a few futile attempts to unseat Snapchat in the ephemeral messaging space, Facebook gave up and went to the drawing board to conceive a different take on private sharing where images won't disappear after being viewed.

Their new iPhone app lets you organize and sync multiple photos in private albums that can be shared directly on Facebook or Instagram, and sent via Messenger. Using facial recognition, Moments groups your photos based on who's in them and when they were taken. Your friends can then contribute to the synced moment with their own photos.

You can now watch Vines offline

Vine, a Twitter-owned video service that lets anyone share funny looping clips with the web at large, or just their followers, has received a nice update Wednesday.

Available as a free update in the App Store, the app now lets fans watch Vines quicker than ever, even with a slower or no Internet connection. You’ll also see that posts show up more quickly than before.

Vine Kids gives children a fun way to watch Vines

Vine, a short video-sharing service Twitter acquired in 2011, today announced a brand new iPhone app aimed at children. Dubbed Vine Kids, it utilizes animated characters, to let kids watch videos that the company deems appropriate for a young audience.

The idea for an app apparently came after one of Vine team members realized how much his two-year-old daughter enjoyed watching funny Vines.

The team then set out to create an iOS app that would act as a safe place for children to enjoy funny Vines without being exposed to, you know, adult or otherwise questionable content that people share on the service.

Facebook’s Slingshot goes 2.0, hopes you’ll use it

Remember Slingshot? Yeah, me neither. If it's been a while since you last fired up Facebook's app that many folks deem pointless, you may want to give it another try as the social networking giant on Thursday pushed a major 2.0 update, bringing out half a dozen new features.

The app's been rebuilt from the ground up to be “simpler, faster and more fun to share life as it happens”, bringing out private reactions, photo filters, drawings and emojis.

There are also instant notifications on a per-contact basis and you can now share fav shots out to other apps, among other new additions.

Vine update brings per-account push alerts

Twitter-owned Vine, a video service optimized for sharing six-second long looping video clips, on Tuesday received a small update. Bumping the iPhone app to version 3.1, it introduced enhanced push notifications with the ability to choose push alerts on a per-account basis.

Folks who have tons of followers on Vine are frequently inundated with alerts each time someone shares a clip on Vine, revines a vine, comments on it and what not.

There's nothing worse than being overwhelmed and having to cope with unwanted notifications. The team is feeling your pain so they've put together this little feature where you get a notification whenever your favorite contacts post on Vine.

iOS 8 apps with custom Sharing and Action sheets

With the introduction of iOS 8 came vast amounts of new functionality, including the ability for users to add custom sharing and actions options to iOS's share sheet. This enables anything from in-line translation to saving notes to your favorite app from anywhere on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

We've worked to bring together a compilation of iOS apps that have been updated by their developers to include support for these new features. As we happen upon them, we'll be adding more apps to the list below, so check back soon for those. 

The best new features of iOS 8

Admittedly, the myriad of new and useful capabilities that Apple's just-released iOS 8 brings to your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are going to prove hugely popular with mainstream users, to say the least. With iOS 8, Apple is appeasing harsh critics who'd frequently point out that Android is capable of things iOS cannot do, and then some more.

iOS 8 opens up Apple's mobile operating system to third-party development to a much greater extent than ever before. And stemming from relaxed policies, iOS 8 boosts on-the-go productivity with deeper inter-app sharing while implementing some of the features our Android friends have grown accustomed to, but in a typical hassle-free Apple fashion, things like third-party keyboards, custom actions, photo editing extensions within the context of Photos and Camera apps and way more.

And though evolutionary rather than revolutionary, we have no doubt in our minds that iOS 8 is going to significantly improve the functionality of Apple's mobile platform, and perhaps even give some folks less reasons to jailbreak.

To celebrate today's release of the free iOS 8 software update, we proudly present you this detailed overview of more than two dozen iOS 8 features we think you're going to fall in love with at first sight.