How to Fix Full Page Browser Screenshots Showing Black Color
There are many different extensions that you can use to take complete screenshots in your browser. This is usually a more elegant way to save site content than to “print” it in PDF format or save it to your computer as an entire website. Since I am using Chrome I have been using the full screen capture feature for a while, but you can also take these screenshots manually if you don’t want to install something new to do this. ( Same with Firefox .)
Ever since I can remember, I have had one curious problem: taking screenshots this way – through a browser extension or even manually – always resulted in a big and fat ball out of nothing. No matter how hard I tried, I always got a screenshot that was completely black or transparent, definitely not the website content I wanted to keep.
I tried to fix this problem by testing various screen capture extensions, but when that didn’t work, I gave up. However, I am happy to report that I have finally found a solution that restores full screen capture functionality to Chrome and Firefox. (These strange completely black screens appeared in both browsers regardless of the extension.)
While this method may be specific to my setup, I am not using any hardware that others would not be using: an Nvidia graphics card with the latest drivers, a regularly updated version of Windows 10, no weird browser extensions or USB devices. causing chaos, etc.
I mention Nvidia a little, because the solution actually has to do with my graphics card (a little). I found that by turning off hardware acceleration in Chrome and Firefox, which slowed down my tab-filled sessions a bit, I could magically take smooth full-page screenshots again. I’m not entirely sure why this fix works, but it does work, and that’s what matters most to me.
This troubleshooting method is easy to try on your own:
Chromium
- Click the three-dot icon in the upper right corner of your browser.
- Click “Settings”.
- Enter “equipment” in the search box if you are lazy. Otherwise, scroll down and click the “Advanced” section at the bottom of the page, and then scroll down until you see the “System” section.
- Uncheck the box next to “Use hardware acceleration when available.”
Fire fox
- Click the three-line hamburger icon in the upper right corner of your browser.
- Click “Settings”.
- Enter “hardware” in the search box or scroll down to the “Performance” section.
- Uncheck the box next to Use Recommended Performance Settings.
If you don’t want to mess with any of this, you can also switch computers – if possible. While I had all sorts of problems on my desktop PC, I found that taking full-page screenshots works fine on my MacBook. However, it’s not that hard to turn hardware acceleration on and off to quickly fix the problem, and this is another idea to add to your set of tricks if you run into browser (graphics related) issues that you can’t pinpoint. …