On both iPad and iPhone, when I’m in Safari and looking at a pdf, and I select Drafts from the share sheet, the capture window has nothing in it. I’ve checked the settings, it still has the default (title, URL, selection), and it works fine for regular web pages. I’ve tried with several online PDFs, same problem every time. On Mac, I get the URL of the PDF like I’d expect.
I could be wrong, but if you’re trying to capture the selected text, I think that might be an i(Pad)OS Safari issue rather than a Drafts issue?
That said, just tried it myself and I’m curious as to why the URL’s not coming through. One for Greg to weigh in on…
This is a long-standing Safari bug on iOS.
Somewhat convoluted to explain, but if a share extension uses the Safari feature that allows it inquire about about page elements – which Drafts does to support capturing selected text, page title, etc. in the capture template – it breaks capture of PDF URLs, because Safari does not send the URL of the PDF to the share extension, only some garbage data.
This has been around for years, so I don’t think Apple has much interest in fixing it, unfortunately.
Thanks. It does seem like there must be a workaround, however, because every other 3rd party app on my share sheet (Bear, Tot, Things, Reader) returns the proper URL.
Interesting, it does look like Things at least figured out a workaround. I don’t think the others you mention utilize the capture functionality that triggers the bug. Might have to reach out to them and see if they’ll share what they are doing – it doesn’t look to me like the others you mention utilize any of the functionality that triggers the problem, like capturing text selections from the page.
I just tried it with Tot and that isn’t passing through the selection.
Right, none appear to capture a text selection, but all the others at least capture the URL.
FWIW, this shortcut works on PDF pages, it makes a new Draft with the current Safari URL: Shortcuts