Another upcoming change that’s related to Nearby Share is its placement in Android’s share sheet. According to the “what’s new in Google System Updates page, Nearby Share “will now show in the first row as a sharing option.”
A new shortcut for sharing with surrounding devices will now appear next to the share button. This way you can quickly send the copied text or image to another device. At the same time, the same clipboard UI will appear on the receiving device. This feature was announced at Google I/O 2022.
This change hasn’t rolled out yet, but you can see it in action in this screenshot from @AssembleDebug on Twitter. The “Nearby” option will disappear from the top and will only be shown among other share sheet targets. (I don’t know why this change is being made.)
Here is the nearby share icon will be placed. Its place is not consistent and it will move around if we use other apps to share content from this sheet. @technacity pic.twitter.com/TGSFPSE6W5
— Kim (@AssembleDebug) November 18, 2022
EDIT: Devices running Android 11+ have to place the Nearby Share chip in the action row of the share sheet, so consistency in placement isn’t an issue here.
However, perhaps Google saw that this wasn’t being used very much. On Android 6-10 devices where the AOSP share sheet doesn’t support the action row, Nearby Share is already shown in the first row/page of the share sheet.
So if Google gets rid of the chip in the action row, it’d just make the experience consistent across Android 6-13.
(Alternatively, Google isn’t getting rid of the Nearby Share chip in the action row, but instead will leave it in place AND add the share target entry point shown in the first row. This would give users on Android 11+ two ways to access Nearby Share from the share sheet.)