I want to add my electron app to mac's ,share menu extension when any folder is clicked

enter image description here shown code is piece of build.config.json file , I tried to rebuild it using chat gpt's idea but I don't think it is practical solution, is it how it is done ? or is there any way to add my app to share menu extension , can anyone has reference to how i can solve my problem. thank you in advance

"mac": {
		"icon": "static/xxx.png", 
		"category": "public.app-category.utilities",
		"target": "dmg",
		"hardenedRuntime": true,
		"gatekeeperAssess": true,
		"extendInfo": {
		  "NSAppleEventsUsageDescription": "Let me use Apple Events.",
		  "NSCameraUsageDescription": "Let me use the camera.",
		  "NSScreenCaptureDescription": "Let me take screenshots.",
		  "NSServices": [
          {
            "NSMenuItem": {
              "default": "Share with My App"
            },
            "NSMessage": "shareWithMyApp:",
            "NSSendTypes": [
              "NSStringPboardType"
            ],
            "NSReturnTypes": [
              "NSStringPboardType"
            ]
          }
        ]
		}
	  }

What you need to do is write a Share Extension and include it in your bundled app. In my experience (which may not be the best way to do it) I built a minimal Share extension in xCode and the I included the generated ".appex" package in my built app. I'm still trying to work out the quirks on my attempt, and it's definitely a much more involved process than just adding some values to the Info.plist.

You'll need to be able to write some code in Swift or Obj-C and the proper design is to have the user validate the selected files and then "share them" with a cloud service in the extension, preferably, independent of the the parent app.

I believe in the iOS version of share extensions the extension is heavily sandboxed with only certain shared resources being available. You should be able to access shared keychain resources and application group files.

What follows is my dirty method of including a share extension in and electron project on MacOS. I know others have done it, but this is what I figured out by hacking away at the idea.

I've found that I can share files to an application group folder reachable by both the extension and the parent app. Unlike iOS, MacOS allows the child app to launch the parent app, although with no arguments. Having these resources available, I wrote a minimal share extension using the template provided by xCode.

My extension closes the share dialog as if the user had pressed the send button and writes the received URLs out to files in the application group folder. I believe that this will not be allowed in the App Store, as they'll enforce certain patterns.

My extension simply writes the URLS into files named with UUIDv1 values, allowing me to keep them in the order they were received. After I write those files out, I launch my app which looks for those same files (on launch or second-instance) and processes the files using my electron code which I've already written to handle command line arguments.

In addition to writing the code, you'll need to write Info.plist values which help the OS manage your extension. This is the relevant portion in my extensions Info.plist.

<key>NSExtension</key>
<dict>
	<key>NSExtensionAttributes</key>
	<dict>
		<key>NSExtensionActivationRule</key>
		<dict>
			<key>NSExtensionActivationSupportsAttachmentsWithMinCount</key>
			<integer>1</integer>
			<key>NSExtensionActivationSupportsText</key>
			<false/>
			<key>NSExtensionActivationSupportsWebURLWithMaxCount</key>
			<integer>0</integer>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>NSExtensionPointIdentifier</key>
	<string>com.apple.share-services</string>
	<key>NSExtensionPrincipalClass</key>
	<string>$(PRODUCT_MODULE_NAME).ShareViewController</string>
</dict>

The extension should also have a bundle identifier signifying it's a relation to your parent app.

You'll also likely want to configure the name and icon for your extension in xCode so that it appears as desired in the menu.

Once the xCode project is built, I copy the generated ".appex" into my electron project (in this case, at the path includes/mac/universal/PlugIns/Share.appex and it's part of my electron-builder mac build configuration. In my electron-builder.json, the relevant entries looks like this.

{
  ...
  "mac": {
    ...
    "extraFiles": [
      {
        "from": "./includes/${os}/universal/PlugIns",
        "to": "PlugIns"
      }
    ]
  }
}

At the moment, I'm still trying to get past a few quirky things that prevent my extension from being automatically enabled on the system.

1. The built app has to be run before the extension is recognized by the operating system.
2. The first time I got it to work, it needed to be enabled in System Preferences > Extensions > Added Extensions and System Preferences > Extensions > Share Menu. After the first time, these were remembered by the system.
3. While other applications have the extension in their menus after doing this, I had to restart Finder (restart or log out/in) to have it show up in the finder menu.

In regards to your question about specifically targeting folders, I don't have an answer. This page in apple's documentation describes configuring the activation rules, although I don't see anything that would help. You could filter after your app is selected from the menu, but it would still appear in the menu for non-folder objects.

I hope this made sense and helps you or someone in some way. The yellow box tells me not to do this, but if someone would be nice enough to teach us a better, less hacky method of implementing a share extension for an Electron app, I would be very interested in hearing all about it.