Compared with the previous two Beta versions, the Android 12 Beta 3 released a few days ago introduced a lot of changes and improvements. Although Google has detailed the major user-oriented changes in Beta 3 in its blog, many detailed changes have not been fully included. Android 12 has introduced a very useful feature-recent URL sharing.
This feature allows you to quickly copy the links in the recent application overview. In fact, XDA editors noticed this feature as early as the Beta 3 release, but it was not clear how it worked. And now Google has shared a developer document that explains this feature in detail.
According to official documents, the recent URL sharing function can be enabled by any application that provides a web user interface and overrides the onProvideAssistContent method of the Activity class. This method is used to provide structured information about the current foreground content to the assistant application. Basically, the application can tell the assistant that the current foreground content is loaded from a specific web page. In Android 12, the URL is extracted and displayed to the user, allowing them to easily copy it from the recent app overview.
As you can see in the screenshot, the URL appears as an icon in the upper right corner of the app card in the recent apps overview. You can click on it to view the full URL, and then copy or share it from the recent app overview. Clicking this button will also show a contact suggestion at the bottom to help you share the URL on the same screen.
Currently, if you want to copy a link from the Google browser and share it with your friends, you have to click the address bar, then click the copy button, switch to the messaging application of your choice, and then paste the URL there before clicking send. Or, you can click the address bar, then click the share button, select the application you want to share the link with from the sharing table, and then select the contact you want to share.
In both cases, this is a rather long process. The recent URL sharing feature is designed to simplify this process to a great extent, allowing you to swipe up to open an overview of recent applications, and then copy or share the link on the same screen.
