How to capture and edit long screenshots on your Android phone

Originally published on November 9, 2018

Taking a photo on Android is quite simple. On most phones, all you have to do is hold the Volume down and Power buttons for a second. That’s it.

But a select number of handsets like OnePlus devices or Samsung and Huawei phones offer an extra option – the ability to take scrolling or long screenshots.

Fortunately, even if you don’t have a phone which supports this option, you can still capture a long screenshot with your Android device. How? Keep reading to find out.

How to take a long screenshot on OnePlus devices

OnePlus has long been offering this feature and it’s very easy to take advantage of it.

1. Navigate to the screen you want to take a shot of.
2. Take a screenshot as you normally would.
3. Look at the bottom and tap on the third icon.
4. The page will start going down. Tap the screen to stop scrolling.
5. Voila, the expanding screenshot is captured!
6. You can check out the the result in the Gallery and from there you can use the phone’s built-in editor if you want to tweak it a little bit.

How to take a scrolling screenshot on any Android device

If you can’t afford to buy a OnePlus phone or a high-end Galaxy device, don’t worry. You can still take advantage of this feature by employing the help of third-party apps from the Google Play Store.

For this tutorial, we’re going to use LongShot, but there are other options like Scroll Capture. Unfortunately this app has a few shortcomings.

Here’s how to use LongShot to take a long screenshot

1. Open the LongShot app on your device.
2. Turn the Auto-scroll option in Settings>Accessibility as prompted.
3. Tap on the Capture Screenshot icon in the app. The following messages should be displayed: “LongShot will start capturing everything that’s displayed on your screen.” Tap Start Now.
4. Navigate to the page you want to take a screenshot of.
5. Tap on the floating “Start” green button that has appeared on your display.
6. Scroll down until satisfied and click above the red line to stop capturing
7. Edit the resulting screenshot in the app and save it.
8. From there you can easily Share it.

For really long screenshots, the app performs a stitching act. Fortunately you can edit them (using the Adjust button) in such as way as to merge the parts quite seamlessly.

There’s also the option to use the Capture Web page option, but this feature only allows you to screenshot in the app’s browser.

Scroll Capture is another app you can take long screenshots. However, you can only use it to take a shot in the app’s own browser. On top of that, it takes screenshots of the entire web page, top to bottom and does not let you select certain parts. Although, you can manually crop the parts that interest you afterwards.

How to take a long screenshot in Scroll Capture

1. Open the app on your device.
2. Enter the URL of the page you want to take a shot of.
3. Tap on the purple circular button at the bottom of the screen.
4. Check the long screenshot in your Gallery

Note: for some websites the tool doesn’t seem to work.