Taking screenshots on a Pixel smartphone is easy. Hardware buttons, multitasking menu, Quick Tap, and Google Assistant are some methods you can use to capture the screen on your Pixel phone.
But what if the content you want to capture is stretched vertically? This is where a scrolling screenshot comes into play. It allows you to capture content stretched vertically on your screen, so you don’t have to take multiple screenshots and stitch them together. And it’s just as easy to capture as regular screenshots.
Follow along as we explain two ways to capture scrolling screenshots on a Pixel phone.
Google’s built-in screenshot utility on all newer Pixel phones supports capturing scrolling screenshots. You can take a screenshot using this native utility as shown in the following steps:
- Open the app/screen with the content you want to capture.
- Take a screenshot. press the Power + Volume down button combination and release it as soon as the screen flashes. Alternatively, you can open the multitasking menu and press the button Screenshot or use the Google Assistant and tell it to take a screenshot.
- All these methods take a normal size screenshot by default. Tap on the catch more on the screenshot preview thumbnail in the bottom right corner of the screen to see a full snapshot of all the content you can capture.
- Drag the accent point along the top and bottom edge of the snipping tool to increase the capture area and select more content to include in your screenshot. Similarly, drag the focus point on the horizontal edge to adjust the capture area horizontally.
- If you want to annotate the screenshot, tap the pen icon at the bottom right corner of the screen. This will reveal all the markup options you can use to modify the screenshot.
- Once you’re happy with how your screenshot looks, press the button Save button to save it.
By default, all screenshots are saved to your phone’s gallery. Open your favorite gallery app to access them. You can also edit or annotate them further or share them with others from there.
If you are using a Pixel smartphone running Android 11 or below, the above method will not help you. Instead, you’ll need to use a dedicated screenshot app to take scrolling screenshots on your phone.
There are several third-party screenshot apps on the Play Store that you can use for this. We recommend using the Screen Master app. It’s free to use for the most part and contains a bunch of tools to help you capture and edit/markup your screenshots. In a nutshell, it is a complete solution for your Android screenshot needs.
Discharge: screen master (Free in-app purchases available)
Get started with Screen Master
Once installed, you need to grant Screen Master access to some permissions. Start by launching the app, and when it asks for media access on your device, press Allow to proceed. Now touch the Activate screenshot button to enable Screen Master.
As soon as you do this, Screen Master will ask you to grant access to draw over other apps. This is required to capture full screen content on your device. Faucet okay in the Tip pop-up window to access the Show over other apps settings page.
Here, scroll to find the Screen Master app, select it and turn on the option to Allow display over other apps.
This setup process will add a semi-transparent screenshot button to the side of your screen. With everything set up, follow these steps to take a scrolling screenshot with Screen Master:
- Go to the app or screen you want to take a scrolling screenshot of.
- Tap the floating button with the shutter icon, and when prompted to grant access to record and broadcast your screen, click Start now.
- Screen Master will now give you a crop tool to adjust the area you want to capture. Do it and press the Stitch button at the bottom.
- Scroll down the screen to the area you want to capture, while making sure the screen overlaps the content of the previous screenshot, and press the More button (+) on the bottom. Repeat this until you have covered the area of ​​the screen you want to capture.
- Tap the check button at the bottom of the screen.
- On the next screen, tap automatic stitch to join the screenshots automatically.
- Finally, touch the Save button to save the screenshot.
Screen Master will save the screenshot to your gallery. It will show some app suggestions on the next screen to share the image directly from the app itself.
There is also a pencil icon in the upper right corner. Tapping it will take you to the Edit window where you can edit or annotate the screenshot and export it in different formats.
[Optional] Take screenshots using the quick touch gesture
Although Screen Master makes taking screenshots on Android easy by including a floating button on the screen, there is a way to further streamline the process. It involves using the Quick Tap gesture on Pixel phones, which is essentially a virtual button on the back of your phone.
Quick Tap is available on Pixel 4a (5G) and newer models. If you have one of these phones, here’s how you can assign it to take a screenshot with the Screen Master app:
- Launching settings.
- Scroll down and select System.
- Tap on gestures and select Quick tap to initiate actions.
- Activate the button next to use quick touch to enable it.
- Scroll down and select the open the app action. Tap the gear icon next to it and select screen master.
- Tap the gear icon next to the app name and select start capture.
Now once you have set up the action, whenever you want to capture a screenshot of vertically stretched content, open the content and double tap the back of your phone. This will launch the Screen Master capture tool, where you can perform the steps listed above to take a scrolling screenshot.
Never click multiple screenshots to capture extended content again
Using the methods we just discussed, you can easily capture scrolling screenshots of long web pages, menus, lists, and more, in one go. This not only speeds up the process when you have multiple screenshots to take, but also helps you save storage space and effort that you would otherwise expend if you went the traditional route.
After you have captured a screenshot, if you plan to use it somewhere or share it with others, there are some tricks you can use to annotate it and highlight some of its key details for a better presentation.