MacMost Now 765: Facebook Sharing With iOS 6

While Facebook sharing has always been available on the iPhone using the Facebook app, you can now share photos and updates directly from several Apple apps. So now you can take a picture with the Camera app and upload to Facebook directly.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's take a look at the new ability to share using Facebook in IOS 6.
So, one of the biggest complaints people have had about iPhones and iPads is the inability to share to Facebook from some of the default apps. Sure you could run the official Facebook app and share photos and such. But a lot of people wanted to do that right from the camera app. Well, with IOS 6 you can now do this from the iPhone and iPad. It is pretty simple if you set it up right. 
So the first thing you want to do is to go to your settings app and under settings you want to look for the new settings here on the left for Facebook. You can see it right here Twitter and Facebook together, kind of in their own category. Because they are above all the third party apps like Angry Birds and below all the standard apps like iBooks, Music and Videos. So if you select Facebook you will see that there are certain settings here. One is to set your account. If I tapped on that it would take me to my account settings, user ID and password. It also has which apps can use the contact information there.  If you click on the settings here you can see several different things like whether or not chats and messages will play sound and vibrate, things like that. 
Once that is all set up you can share things. For instance in Safari you have the standard share button there and you tap that and one of the share options is Facebook. I tap on that and it comes up with this little Facebook window here. You can see I can type in my message. It includes the link, you can see the little paperclip there telling it is going to include the link. I can also tap on friends to tag friends and tap on location to add location. There is a post button in the upper right hand corner. 
Now here I am in the photos app. In the photos app I can take a look at the last picture I took. You can see that I have the share button there as well and I'm going to tap on that and then I have the Facebook option there. Not only can I type a message and add location, tag friends, but I can also tap on the little tag there which should ask me to choose an album to post to which can come in handy. 
It assumes of course that you have already set up some albums in Facebook. So head over to the Facebook web site and create photo albums first and then you can choose which one to do for posting. It does not look like you can create new albums this way. 
You can share in odd and unusual places like for instance in the App Store you can search for an app and once you are looking at it you can do the little share button there and you see you can share on Facebook about an app in the App Store.
I think if anything this is a demonstration of what other apps can do. So in the future you might find more third party apps supporting this sharing Facebook thing. A lot of them picked up on share in Twitter that was added in IOS 5 and of course they can share email and messages too. So look for Facebook sharing to your favorite app soon.
Now another cool thing that I noticed was once you have set up Facebook all your Facebook friends come in as contacts on the Contacts app and you can actually tap on the Facebook link in the Contacts and it will take you right to their Facebook page. So it is a handy way when you look at somebody's contact to jump right to their Facebook page as well. And it also added their Facebook picture in the Contacts app. So instead of having your Contact List filled with people that do not have any picture, suddenly you will find that a lot of them do or maybe all of them do. 
I have found that it works in the new Maps app. You've got where there is a pin you can share location and you can share to Facebook. It will create a little link to the map location.
So while sharing to Facebook isn't everywhere and in every app yet it certainly seems like it might be headed that way. At least it is there for photos which is what a lot of people want right off the bat especially for use on the iPhone.
I hope you found this useful. Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 16 Responses to “MacMost Now 765: Facebook Sharing With iOS 6”

Brendan

12 years ago

My issue with the contacts update is that I get duplicate contacts and also contacts from Facebook that I really do not want in my contacts list. Is there no way of editing the number of contacts?

Gary Rosenzweig

Duplicate contacts usually come from when you have the same contact in multiple accounts (iCloud and also Gmail, for example). Some people are syncing contacts from their Mac or PC, and also syncing via iCloud and so get some contacts twice. I haven't seen whether this happens via Facebook, but I guess it could.

Nilesh

You can switch it off under settings>Facebook> contacts to off

Richard24

Great video Gary, very helpful, but have one question about leaving me signed into Facebook and Twitter on my iPad. Does it have any effect on the battery life.

Not that I can think of -- I don't see any relation between storing your FB and Twitter info on your device and battery life.

im so please that Facebook is integrated now. match made in heaven, although a picture icon to attach pictures would of been good here.

Dillan Oliver Lawrence

Surely some of the IOS6 features such as FB could have been released for the original iPad. I am disappointed that we have been left out. It looks like apple are trying to make the original ipad obsolete. What are your thoughts, maybe Apple will release a subset of the IOS6 as an update to version 5????

I doubt we'll see an update to iOS 5 that does this. Apple (and other companies) just don't do that. Only bug fixes and security issues get addressed in old operating systems. New features aren't added.

Anna

I actually don't think you're right about tagging people via the lower-right-hand People icon. That's the audience you're posting to, not a tagging utility, as far as I can tell. And tapping on the photo only allows you to choose an album (who needs that?). Can you really not tag people directly from the camera/upload-to-FB option? This seems like a huge deficit. I had to go back into the FB app. Not pleased. Hope I'm wrong...Gary?

I don't use FB or tagging enough to know for sure. But it makes sense that there will always be some advanced functionality that you'd need to go to the FB app for.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I don't think of tagging photos as "advanced" in any way...sigh...

Ashley

Since I updated my iPhone 4S I can't create albums on Facebook from my phone or add photos into any album other then the mobile uploads album, the little plus sign that used to be in the corner is gone! How do I get it back?

You'll need to be more specific. Are you in the Facebook app? The Photos app? Have you set your Facebook account in the Settings app?

Ross

The video is wrong about tagging. The part that says "Friends" on the bottom right isn't for tagging, it's to choose the audience in case you want to limit who can view it.

Nader

Thanks for the video. I am trying to find if I can share a web page to a specific facebook page. I have multiple facebook pages. Can I pick which facebook page to post to?

Unfortunately this kind of sharing is all about your personal Facebook account, not a company or group "page." The best way is to simply use the Facebook web interface and copy and paste the url into a post. That's what I do almost every day with MacMost. Only takes a few seconds.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 765: Facebook Sharing With iOS 6

Comments: 16 Responses to “MacMost Now 765: Facebook Sharing With iOS 6”

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