I’ve had the idea for a contact sharing app for several years now. There’s never been an easy way to share your contact information on the iPhone. The process of finding your contact, choosing to share, and typing in a number (on the tiny keyboard) is far too time consuming. This means that if you’ve just met someone new, you end up getting lost in your phone for a few minutes as they wait awkwardly. You might also try and share the “Me” contact, but Siri uses this to save your personal information including home address and family members. These are the problems I set out to solve with Card Share.

Card Share lets you set up multiple, dedicated contact cards for the explicit purpose of sharing. The app offers three methods of sharing: SMS, Email, and AirDrop. SMS is by far the best, since it lets you type in a number with large keys and the recipient receives immediate feedback of your shared contact. Card Share sends contact cards in the standard vCard format so that they can be opened on any device. Email works similarly, but I prefer asking for someones phone number to avoid any drawn-out spelling sessions. AirDrop is for the adventurous and slightly tech savvy but gets the job done.

With the goal of trying to reduce effort when sharing, you can setup a subject and message to automatically be sent whenever you share. Try something like “It was great to meet you!” or “Let’s touch base soon.” After sharing, you’ll be prompted to add the number or email you just shared to to your contacts. I felt like this feature might not be for everyone, so you can turn it off in the settings. Card Share remembers the last card you shared and your last sharing method, that way whenever you open the app you’re ready to go.

You can download Card Share on the App Store and check it out. I hope you find the app as useful as it is to me. I look forward to hearing your feedback!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/card-share-lightning-fast/id683885418?ls=1&mt=8