Taking a Screen Shot On Your iPhone or iPad

It is fairly simple to take a screen shot in iOS 11 on the iPhone or iPad, if you know the combination of buttons you need to press. With iOS 11, you can mark up or crop the screen shot and share it before saving it to your Photos library. Or, you can share it and skip saving a copy.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: So taking a screen shot on your iOS device whether it's an iPad or an iPhone is pretty simple and straight forward. Yet a lot of people don't know the series of actions you need to do to take it. Things have changed in iOS 11. There's a lot more functionality now.
So if your iOS device has a Home button, which is true of anything before the iPhone X, all you need to do is find either the side switch or on the iPad it's sometimes at the top right corner. Just your Sleep/Wake button and the Home button and press them both at the same time and that will take a screen shot. So you can see it flashed the screen and then you see the screen shot shrink to the bottom left. If you wait long enough it will go away. This is basically how it has always worked. That screen shot is going to go into your Photo Library now. You'll be able to view it there and share it there and do things with it there. 
What's different now is you get that little pause there where it's at the bottom left corner. You can do things with it before it actually gets put in your Photo Library. So let's do it again. This time I'm going to tap it when it appears at the bottom left. 
So I'll tap it. Now it enlarges and goes into Markup mode. So you see a whole bunch of different controls here. At the bottom you've got all of the standard Markup tools that you see throughout iOS 11. So you've got the ability to draw in different colors. You can select things. You've got a plus button at the bottom there where you can add text or even a signature. You can add shapes, arrows, things like that.
You also have the ability to crop by grabbing a corner or a side. So you can see those little blue marks there. So I can crop it to something. You have a Share button at the top right. Tap that and now I can share it using AirDrop. I can use Messages. I can email. All of that. So if my intention is to actually send the screen grab to somebody and I don't want it to be added to my Photos collection, after all that's for my photos. Then I can do that and not have to put it in my library because no matter what I do here, whether I mark it up and then share it or crop it or whatever I'm going to do, when I hit the Done button at the top left I get the option to delete it or save it to Photos. So if all I wanted to do was send it to somebody or AirDrop it somewhere, something like that, I can now delete it and it never goes to my Photos library. Or I can hit Save Photos and it will go to my Photos library with the markup there. 
Now if your iPhone has a Home button everything works exactly the same way. But the iPhone X doesn't have a Home button and, of course, future iPhones will not have it either. So how do you do it there? Well you use that side button again. But instead of the Home button you're going to use the Up volume. You have to use Up volume not down volume. Press those both at the same time. Now you get it at the bottom left corner. I can tap it and I get the same set of Markup tools. I have a Share button except it's at the bottom left corner instead of the top right. I can add things to it. Do all sorts of things to it. I hit Done and I get the ability to Save to Photos or Delete the Screenshot as before so I don't have to have a copy of it with my regular photos in my Photos Library.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Taking a Screen Shot On Your iPhone or iPad”

Jimmy

7 years ago

I like the new features in IOS11

Jim L

On my iPhone 6 and my IPad, I use AssistiveTouch under Accessibility. By using customizing the Top Level Menu, I added Screenshot. I find it easier than having to press two buttons at the same time.

Jim

Yes, these are nice features in iOS 11. But when Apple surreptitiously deletes important features in OS upgrades, users become very reluctant to upgrade. Example: from iOS 9 to 10 the ability to delete all messages in a mailbox was omitted without any advance warning from Apple. Now many iPhone users are running out of memory and their iPhones will be forceably obsoleted when available memory is gone. I don't know whether that is planned obsolesce or negligence. But it's a black mark.

Gary Rosenzweig

Jim: Deleting messages in a mailbox would only be a problem if you are using old-fashion (very old at this point) POP email. Of course you'd have other problems if you are still using POP. With IMAP and similar systems (Gmail, iCloud, etc) email is a cloud service and it isn't necessary to delete email at all. In fact, you don't want to. I haven't deleted email in 9 years. That's 200,000 plus archived emails. The Mail app only shows my inbox and a fraction of the archive (but I can search them all) and it doesn't use up that much space. Perhaps it is time to upgrade your email service?

Patty Murphy

Thanks for the video on "screenshots" - very helpful.

Wendy Farkas

I can't figure out where I'm going wrong. Sometimes when I press the Home and Sleep/Wake key on my 6 (v11.2.2), I invoke Siri; sometimes I reboot; rarely do I hit the sweet spot of timing and manage to get my screen shot. When I do, it's great to have the new image editing features. What am I missing, I wonder?

Wendy: If you are invoking Siri or rebooting, then you are holding way too long. You just need a quick press (less than a second) of both buttons at the same time and then release. The screenshot is taken after you release. So it sounds like you are holding one or both and waiting. Don't wait. Just press and release both at the same time.

Comments Closed.

Taking a Screen Shot On Your iPhone or iPad

Comments: 7 Responses to “Taking a Screen Shot On Your iPhone or iPad”

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