Share an image calling external apps on Unity for Andorid

While learning Unity3D and developing my indie game for Android – Makura – last week, I was trying to set up a button to take a screenshot and share the image opening the default list of Android of the current social apps installed on the device.

I have been stuck for a while, getting errors using AndroidJavaClass and AndroidJavaObject on Unity to call the Java classes of Android.

Once I solved the problem I wanted to share the code on my blog, because I couldn’t find anywhere a solution.

The exact problem was including the jpg of the screenshot as uri for the EXTRA_STREAM parameter of the Intent java object, and let it open properly with other apps.

Below the code in C#:

//instantiate the class Intent
AndroidJavaClass intentClass = new AndroidJavaClass("android.content.Intent");

//instantiate the object Intent
AndroidJavaObject intentObject = new AndroidJavaObject("android.content.Intent");

//call setAction setting ACTION_SEND as parameter
intentObject.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("setAction", intentClass.GetStatic<string>("ACTION_SEND"));

//instantiate the class Uri
AndroidJavaClass uriClass = new AndroidJavaClass("android.net.Uri");

//instantiate the object Uri with the parse of the url's file
AndroidJavaObject uriObject = uriClass.CallStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("parse","file:///sdcard/expl.jpg");

//call putExtra with the uri object of the file
intentObject.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("putExtra", intentClass.GetStatic<string>("EXTRA_STREAM"), uriObject);

//set the type of file
intentObject.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("setType", "image/jpeg");

//instantiate the class UnityPlayer
AndroidJavaClass unity = new AndroidJavaClass("com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayer");

//instantiate the object currentActivity
AndroidJavaObject currentActivity = unity.GetStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("currentActivity");

//call the activity with our Intent
currentActivity.Call("startActivity", intentObject);

I hope this could help someone else!

Don’t hesitate to leave me a comment with your experiences or questions!

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UPDATE 13 MAY 2014

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Finally I had the time to make an example project for this utility.

I’ve heard that some of you had troubles to make it work, so I decided to create a kind of tutorial and share it so you can download it and test it!

My computer runs Windows 7 64bit, Unity Free 4.3.4f1, Java jdk1.7.0_55 and jre7.

At the moment the code is working perfectly, inside the zip file you can find “ShareTest.apk” to test the example on your device.

I really hope to help and make many people happy as, I wasn’t expecting this, but it seems that simple plugins like this are still sold! (Why am I sharing this, so?!!!)

Guys, let me know if you have still troubles! 🙂

Sharing Example

For Windows users: be sure you have JDK and JRE installed ( link ) and that the JAVA_HOME and Path are correctly set up ( if you don’t know what I’m talking check here ore here)

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UPDATE 19 JULY 2015

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IMPORTANT:

Grant the Writing Access to External (SDCard) in PlayerSettings, otherwise you won’t be able to share pictures.

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UPDATE 23 September 2019

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This code doesn’t work anymore on the latest Android OS.
You can target Android 6 and it works fine, but if you want to publish it on Google Play, it won’t be accepted.