How to initiate a real screenshot programmatically, just like the hardware (2 button) screenshot.

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Created Dec ’21

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In my app, I need to have an onscreen button initiate a screenshot (which then gets saved to Photos, etc). Currently, every method I've tried from the forums (every version of UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext...) will capture everything EXCEPT the live feed from the camera, which is running as a sublayer on my view.

Everything from labels to buttons and even background color shows up in the pictures using those methods but no matter what, the image from the camera is just a blank space on the pictures.

However, when my app is running, I can press the two buttons and THAT picture always has the image from the camera included! I need this to happen with my onscreen button and that's what I just can't get to happen the same way.

Does anyone know the actual function/extension/code that runs whenever someone presses the hardware buttons to initiate a screenshot? Or how to accomplish getting everything that's onscreen at a given time to be include in a screenshot, regardless of what layer(s) it's in?

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Answer 1

Gerzer Software OP

Dec ’21

One way you could accomplish this is to use something like UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext() and then to capture separately a frame from the live camera feed before compositing the two images together with, say, Core Graphics to form one image that reconstructs what a “real” screenshot would show. I’m not sure if there’s a more elegant way to do it, but this method should work; it just might require some complex calculations to put the camera frame in the right spot with any appropriate masking, depending on the complexity of your UI layout.

I suspect that whatever code the system runs when the user presses the hardware buttons is not accessible to third-party developers.

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Answer 2

Claude31 OP

Jan ’22

Did you see this long thread. They claim to capture everything, but looks like that's what you tried already:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25448879/how-do-i-take-a-full-screen-screenshot-in-swift

So this one is hopefully more relevant:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19573345/how-can-i-programmatically-capture-a-screenshot-of-a-playing-video

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