With the release of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple is bringing social networking services to the system level by letting users share content to Twitter, Vimeo, and Flickr via Mail, Safari, Messages and AirDrop. Setting up Sharing on your Mac is easy, too, and only takes a few steps.
To add your favorite social networking service, such as Twitter, to Mountain Lion, do this:
- Choose
Apple menu > System Preferences. - Select the
Mail, Contacts & CalendarsPreference Pane. - Click the social networking service you want to add. I’m choosing Twitter.
- Enter the user name and password for the service. Since I’m adding a Twitter account, that’s my Twitter name (jgamet) and my Twitter account password.
- Click
Sign in.
Choose the service you want to add in System Preferences
Apple gets that people might have more than one Twitter handle, so Mountain Lion supports multiple accounts. If you don’t see the service list on the right side of the System Preferences window, just click the Add button. It looks like a little plus symbol, and its tucked away in the lower left corner of the window.
Safari’s Sharing button lives next to the URL/Search field
Sharing with your social networking services is fairly simple once your accounts have been added to Mountain Lion. In Safari, for example, just click the Share button (It looks like a square with an arrow coming swooping out of it), then select which service you want to use. You’ll get a dialog where you can add some text, and if you have more than one account linked to the service, you can choose the one you really want to use, too.
The Sharing dialog lets you add comments before posting
But what about Facebook, you ask? Apple promised we’d have app-level Facebook sharing as well, but that won’t be available until this fall. For now, you’re limited to Twitter, Vimeo and Flickr.