How to Take Screenshots on IOS Without That Pesky Preview Popup
Screenshots are very useful whether you take them to send to a friend, turn them into a meme, insert into a Lifehacker article, or remind yourself of something later. If you pick up a lot of these on iOS, you are no doubt familiar with the preview that appears in the lower left corner after you make one. Sometimes this is exactly what you need – one touch, and you can crop this screenshot, comment on it or send it in messages. However, if all you want to do is take screenshot after screenshot after screenshot, there is a way to skip those preview images for editing.
Or they will – you won’t be able to get rid of them in any current stable version of iOS (the latest is iOS 14.4 at the time of this writing), but you can do it in iOS 14.5. If you’d like to install the developer beta to try it now, we’ve already covered how to do that.
Gadget Hacks has complete information on the workaround. In short, you will no longer use the physical buttons on your phone to take screenshots. Instead, you’ll want to create a new shortcut (via the Shortcuts app) that includes the Media> Device> Take Screenshot action and the Apps> Photos> Save to Photo Album action. That’s all.
The only problem with this approach is that you have to click on a shortcut or activate it through Siri to take a screenshot, which makes it not as useful as simply holding down the physical buttons on your phone to achieve the same effect – with a preview window , certainly. To fix this, Gadget Hacks suggests assigning a screenshot shortcut to the back-taps feature on your phone. So you can just slap your iPhone on the ass to take a screenshot whenever you want.
I love back presses, but I also envision a future in which your photo library will suddenly contain a bunch of screenshots that you don’t really need or don’t need due to accidental tapping. Since you cannot prevent this from happening (unless you are very careful in handling and setting up the device), you probably want to choose a photo album where your screenshots will be saved, rather than the default film.
Consider creating a new photo album, giving it a clever name and sending all your back-tap screenshots there. That way, if it ever gets too cumbersome, you can just delete a ton of photos in one go, instead of having to search all of them in your photo library. (Screen shots taken with your label will not be displayed in a convenient media type “screen shots” in the application “Photo”.)
Aside from this little quirk, the Gadget Hacks workaround is surprisingly useful for taking screenshots. I even think it’s faster to press the back of the phone than move your hand to press the button on the side + volume up . But maybe it’s just me; I take a lot of screenshots.