Playing on the Xbox Series X | S is a scream and a half, but one thing about the console made me want to pull my hair out: it doesn’t let you quickly take screenshots outside of gameplay. If you want to show your home screen or take a few screenshots of your settings pages, Xbox doesn’t make it easy for you. Fortunately, there is a workaround.
How to take screenshots of Xbox Series X | S in-game
If you’re playing a game, you can do that share Button on the controller to take a quick screenshot. You can then press and hold the Xbox button to view and share the screenshot if you want. Alternatively, these screenshots also appear across platforms in the Xbox apps, so you can share them from your phone or PC as well.
How to take screenshots of Xbox Series X | S when not playing
When you’re not playing games on the Xbox Series X | S, the easiest way to take a screenshot is by remote play. You can stream Xbox games to your iPhone, iPad, Android, or Windows device. Once you’ve set this up, you’ll be able to take screenshots of all the pages on the Xbox, whether you’re in a game or not.
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Streaming Xbox games to other devices is basically like using your smartphone or PC as a display for the game console. That means you can see the Xbox home screen, settings pages, or any other system UI page on your smartphone or computer.
When you stream games from Xbox Series X | S to your iPhone or iPad, you can take a screenshot by pressing Power button + volume up on Apple devices without a home button. If your Apple device has a Home button, you can use the Power button + home button Shortcut to take a screenshot.
On Android, you can take these screenshots by opening the Xbox app and setting up the stream. When you’re done, press Power button + volume down. Those streaming Xbox One games on Windows can press either Print screen or Windows Key + Shift + S to take a screenshot.
It’s a bit of a shame that you can’t screenshot natively outside of gaming on the Xbox Series X | S, but hey, if nothing else, this is an opportunity to try out remote gaming. That’s actually why I now regularly play Xbox games on my iPad; maybe you enjoy it too.
