

How to take a screenshot - anderzole
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3gy7f97Ye1qzpapzo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1275803864&Signature=crL3VAhhdyBKuF3NtAe7Xbs26HE%3D

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davidw
Being a site for hackers, and given that Android's source code is available,
this is actually a challenge rather than just another internet dick-waving
contest, right?

 _Edit_. Like this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1406553>

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chops
Non-savvy users really get lost at how screenshots work.

I have a buddy who's a programmer at publishing house, specializing in niche
magazines, and they deal regularly with non-savvy older users. He's got this
story about one such customer who was complaining that something wasn't
working on the website and when asked to send a screenshot he proceeded to:

1) Press PrintScreen 2) Paste it into Word 3) Print it out, and finally, 4)
Fax it to the company.

I thought that was kind of related, and rather humorous.

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thinkbohemian
I REGULARLY receive photos from cameras of someones computer screen when asked
to supply a "screen shot". It was kinda funny the first few times...now its
just sad.

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fforw
One time, my kernel was crapping out and endlessly printing stuff I couldn't
read because it was scrolling WAY to fast and ctrl+s did not work either, so I
photographed my screen to be able to read what the kernel was trying to tell
me (hardware defect).

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duncanj
Once, we had an issue with a single board computer that seemed like a hardware
issue so we called support, and they wanted the output of a logical analyzer.
Unfortunately, we didn't have an interface for our old analyzer, and so we set
up a webcam to show the analyzer screen to the support guy over NetMeeting. It
was kind of funny, but worked great.

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timcederman
I am surprised at how useful what a seemingly superfluous feature is on the
iPhone. I often find myself grabbing screenshots of things and sending it to
friends, Twitter and Facebook. My location on a map. An amusing article I just
saw. An SMS conversation. It's not obvious, but once you know how to do it,
it's very handy and I'm surprised it's so difficult with Android.

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awolf
I love screenshots from the iPad maps application imported into SketchBook or
some other drawing app. Very useful for whipping up driving directions to
forward to a friend.

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thwarted
Why wouldn't you just forward them a link to the driving directions page? You
lose all the functionality of the awesome Internet we have in 2010 by sending
someone a static map. Anyone who can receive that would be in front of a
computer connected to the internet, or if they are on the go, would be on a
smart phone with internet access so they could look it up themselves. Might as
well just carry around a paper map.

Unless you want to be a doormat like that guy in the commercials whose friends
call him to ask him for driving directions and movie show times because your
phone lets you browse the web while you're in a call at the same time. Let
your friends look up their own directions.

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hrabago
I typically send all three. I send the link for the driving directions, I send
my own summary which makes sense to local people, and a screenshot of a map,
with my scribbles on there. "There's this landmark, here's where you turn,
this is Xyz Lane which you'll see on your left just before the street you turn
into, so be ready when you see it, here's our house on the left. If you're
coming from the south instead of west, this is where you'll be coming from."
As far as I know, no one's ever gotten lost this way.

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aptimpropriety
Windows 7 actually comes installed with a Microsoft-developed 'Snipping Tool',
which allows the user to drag a semi-transparent box (or free form, or windows
size, or full screen) over whatever part of the screen the user so desires.
You can annotate, paste, or save the image wherever you like!

/end campus rep plug

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thinkbohemian
Sadly though it still pails in comparison with fastStone capture. It is
impossible to take a screenshot of a menu such as file >> Save As with the
windows 7 too because focus goes to the tool when you select it, where as in
fastStone it does not...plus you can annotate, add drawings, and when you save
it automatically timestamps the filename for you so you don't have to rename
all your freaking files...

In the interest of fairness i take a HUGE number of screenshots (tech support)
so the win 7 tool may be adequate for most, i still find it sub par ( also for
a mac shift+ctrl+cmd+4 saves a snippet to your clipboard...better than the
windows 7 equivalent IMHO shift+cmd+4 to save as a file to your desktop)

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three14
From the help for the Vista version of the Snipping Tool:

Can I capture a snip of a menu, such as a shortcut menu or the Start menu?

Yes. Here's how to do it: Click to open Snipping Tool. On the Snipping Tool
toolbar, click the Minimize button, and then open the menu that you want to
capture. Press CTRL+PRINT SCREEN. Select the type of snip you want, and then
capture the menu.

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sramov

        grep ss[fw] .bashrc
        alias ssf="import -frame -depth 8 -border ~/pic/ss/`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`.png"
        alias ssw="import -window root -depth 8 ~/pic/ss/`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`.png"
    

Results run through OptiPNG.

Other than capturing windows and full screen shots, it would also be nice to
have some KISS solution for doing selections, like in Mac OS X.

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petdog
import does just that, if you drop the "-window root" argument

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sramov
Huh, thanks! Will sure add 'sss' (selection) alias :)

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dlsspy
This really annoyed me. I took screenshots on my iPhone regularly to share
things with people.

I _can't_ do that on my Android phone without rooting it (at least, according
to the screenshot apps in the market).

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russell_h
I've had the exact same experience. Admittedly, I was usually taking
screenshots of the iPhone to share amusing UI bugs... but still.

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ntoshev
I did't know how to take a screenshot on the iPhone but this would be useful.
So I searched for other iPhone tips I'm missing, and here is a pretty nice
collection:

[http://iphonetoolbox.com/news/ultimate-list-of-iphone-
tips-a...](http://iphonetoolbox.com/news/ultimate-list-of-iphone-tips-and-
tricks/)

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hiroprot
I find it interesting that this is so easy on iPhone and so hard on Android.

For some reason, I think of taking screenshots as a poweruser feature (which
might or might not be the case), and that Android would make it easy, while
Apple wouldn't make it available to regular users.

I wonder what the thinking behind those decisions were. Did his Steveness
demand the easy screenshot functionality to capture UI feedback on the go?

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jsz0
It is interesting considering the limited number of physical button
combinations on the iPhone. It was definitely more than an after-thought. They
introduced the feature in iPhone OS 2.0 at the same the SDK was released so
I'm guessing they intended it mostly for developers then realized it was
pretty handy for all sorts of things.

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Tichy
I hate the way it is done on OS X, too. I can't remember keyboard shortcuts I
only use every couple of months.

Usually I use The Gimp for screenshots.

Anyway, this thing should be easy to fix for Android.

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sjs
You can always change the keyboard shortcuts to something else if you don't
like Cmd-Shift-3 and Cmd-Shift-4.

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nailer
My prob with using a Mac for he last two years is instructions that use the
alt and cmd keys (which are labelled on my MacBook keyboard as alt and cmd) as
something else - one is called 'option', the other 'apple' but there is no key
labelled either 'option' or 'apple' on the MacBook.

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culturestate
The option/apple keys are the alt key - until a couple years ago, there was no
'alt' and the option/apple key was called 'open apple option' by most people.

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nailer
Thanks, but it's not so much the correct answer to the question that concerns
me, but why there needs to be a question at all.

If the key is labelled alt, call it alt, if it wants to be called steve, then
have the documentation refer to it as steve.

It's a keyboard. It shouldn't be this complex.

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sjs
I agree. Calling the command key apple is falling out of use though. Most
people these days call it command or use the cloverleaf symbol, and it says
command and has the cloverleaf symbol on it. People have started calling
option alt and I'm not 100% sure why that's so, but they key says option and
alt, so it shouldn't really be confusing (except that some people might think
you hold Fn to make it alt instead of option, or something like that).

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nailer
Glad to know I'm not alone. The Macbook keyboard only has the text 'alt'.

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sjs
Oh, must be a recent change. I don't like that they removed the text on the
arrow keys as well. They used to say page up/down and home/end since fn-left
is home, fn-right end, fn-up page up and fn-down page down. That's not obvious
to switchers from any other OS.

I get that they want to be all zen and remove unnecessary stuff but some of
this stuff is necessary. Not good for users.

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ecaron
You could also reduce the list to:

1) Root* your phone or install Froyo

2) Install ShootMe ([http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-bw-picme-
loc...](http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-bw-picme-local-
zmxE.aspx))

*: If you're reading this thread, and you have an Android but it isn't rooted, you're doing it wrong...

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steveklabnik
Some of us just like to use mobile phones, and don't enjoy fiddling with them.

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sandGorgon
Question - is there a bug for this on Android ?

if not, I suggest someone file it (I dont have Android.. yet).

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veeti
[http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6547&q...](http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6547&q=screenshot&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars)

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khangtoh
You have to realize that the android platform is years behind the iPhone.
Developing for the iPhone was a nightmare when the SDK was first released to
developers. APIs that did not work as described. Talk to iPhone developers
that went through that stage of the evolution and you'll know.

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rodh257
Am I the only one that thinks this really isn't a big deal, some apple fan
(judging by the guys twitter) making a big deal over nothing

[Edit: renamed to fan.]

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ellyagg
You're right that it's not that big of a deal, but downvoted for using "apple
fanboy".

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yembi
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12985/>

Screenshot pimp: I use the non toolbar buttons in the options. It lets you
select the area in the browser you want to capture.

Works in mac, too (but not sure about other linux distros)

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studer
No idea what the Android team's rationale is, but from a security perspective,
I'm pretty happy that random applications don't have access to things written
to the screen by other applications.

Not sure why it's not an OS level built-in, though.

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crocowhile
I find lack of universal copy (as in copy and paste) more disturbing. I wish I
was able to select and copy text in just any application, or at least in
browser and mail!

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drivebyacct
You can select text in Email, Corp Email and the Browser. Gmail has copy/paste
in Froyo.

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crocowhile
How? I have a nexus one running Froyo, I cannot select any text in
browser/email. The only text I can select and copy is the one in text fields.

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drivebyacct
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FePeTdNswcE>

It's right under the "More" menu entry man, dunna how you didn't look there.
Also, lmgtfy.

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crocowhile
my bad. thanks. I was assuming a feature like that should activate by holding
on the text, though.

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drivebyacct
I wish it worked like that. That way you wouldn't have to wait for a developer
to enable copy/paste in the app, it would be there by default.

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JMiao
i don't know many "normals" that take desktop screenshots...but i get your
point.

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Keyframe
Droid Does? What is this, copywriter was a fan of "sega does what
nintendon't"?

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jokermatt999
That was the Droid's major marketing campaign, actually. Blame the writers of
the ad campaign, not the image maker.

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Keyframe
Sorry. I wasn't clear enough, I actually meant that as a blame towards ad
copy, not the image itself.

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volomike
Oh wow. That sucks. Here I am pumped about the future of Android and I didn't
realize this. Google, please fix -- I know you read Hacker News.

