> Many a time, a share button simply works

It works! Unless:

- the person you’re linking it to doesn’t have an account on that platform

- you’re posting it in a chat, and the site doesn’t implement unfurls correctly

- the site shows a thumbnail on the link, but clicking on it gets hijacked by the “mAkE an aCcOuNt/ login here” shenanigans.

- you’re trying to link to something in context and the sites linking doesn’t support it

- the site is riddled with ads.

- the site is slow to load.

- you’re trying to save something and don’t want to have to load the site every single time in order to refer to it.

- any combination of the above.

Screenshots are much better for archival. So many times you go back to a url/link you shared, and poof it's gone or the content has changed from when you sent it.

Screenshots allows you to get a point in time reference to what you are sharing.

In the case of sharing a link I have to remember/find where it is in each app, likely scroll through a long list of messaging (and for some reason non-messaging apps) to find the correct app, select the contact, and then pray that the link sent actually works for them and contains the correct information I'm seeing (very often the link will actually direct them to a web version of the app I'm using, then put a modal popup in front of the information asking them to use the app, then either send them to the app store, or send them to the app but strip out the actual information I linked and send them to a blank map).

Screenshots are clunky and unideal, but at least they're fast and I know that they don't fail or break or send the wrong info to my contact.

If it were a one off message, this wouldn't be an issue, but if you zoom out on the issue and see you're sending up to a hundred messages a day, points of failure become major life frictions and you're trained out of using things like links in messaging apps.

The ideal "World Wide Web" envisioned by it's original design, was that a URI was a durable pointer to an immutable piece of information.

In 2026, we now know that the information can be edited, or completely removed for many reasons, some legitimate, and some nefarious.

Taking a screenshot is the easiest way to ensure the original is kept for folks to see. Frankly, it'd be even better if (a) the app can signal to the OS information about the url to the page for the screenshot, (b) timestamps were captured in the image and not cropped, and (c) the OS can authenticate the screen shot and digitally sign that it came from an unaltered device.

I totally disagree - the few times I accidentally use a share button, or are forced to use one, the experience is so desperately miserable I am forcibly reminded why I never use them. It's always several clicks, choosing the social platform I need from the millions-long-list which is paginated into pages of like 4 icons at a time (I just want a URL! but you broke your website to force users into the app!) and from there choosing a specific chat or group or whatever from a poorly ordered list that starts with some person I met at a bar twelve years ago rather than the chat I was literally just typing in two seconds ago...

and then when it does send I have no control over the presentation on the other side. Sites love to add some cringe "I love this app SOOOO much hearteyesemoji fire fire fire... sent from my iPhone, made with love in san cupertino" nonsense in my own voice - literally sending their words into my chats using my account, as though I had written their marketing dreck