Screenshots are very useful whether you’re sending them to a friend, converting them to a meme, inserting them into a Lifehacker article, or remembering something later. If you use a lot of these in iOS then you are no doubt familiar with the preview that appears in the lower left corner after you take one. Sometimes it’s just what you want – one tap and you can crop, annotate, or message this screenshot. However, if you just want to take screenshot by screenshot by screenshot by screenshot, you can delete this preview for tapping to edit.
Or it will – you can’t remove it in any current, stable version of iOS (the latest is iOS 14.4, at this point) – but you should be able to do it in iOS 14.5. If you’d like to install the developer beta to try it out now, we have it previously covered how does it work.
Gadget hacks has the full workaround details. The short version is that you no longer use your phone’s physical buttons to take a screenshot. Instead, you want to create a new shortcut (via the connections App) this marks the action Media> Device> Take Screenshot, as well as the action Apps> Photos> Save to Photo Album. That’s it.
The only problem with this approach is that you have to tap your shortcut or activate it through Siri to take a screenshot. This doesn’t make it so useful to simply hold your phone’s physical buttons to achieve the same effect – with a preview window of course. To fix this, Gadget Hacks suggests assigning the screenshot shortcut to your phone Back tips Feature. That way, you can just tap your iPhone on the buttocks to take a screenshot anytime.
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I enjoyed typing back, but I also envision a future where your photo library suddenly has a bunch of screenshots that you didn’t really need or want due to accidental typing. Since you can’t prevent this from happening (unless you are very careful handling and setting your device down), you will likely want to choose a photo album to save your screenshots in, which is not your default camera role.
Consider creating a new photo album, giving it a clever name, and sending all of your typed screenshots there. That way, if it ever gets too bulky, you can simply delete a bunch of photos at once instead of going through your photo library and finding them all. (Screenshots captured with your link will not be displayed in the convenient “Screenshots” media type photos App.)
That little quirk aside, Gadget Hacks’ workaround is surprisingly useful for taking screenshots. In fact, I think tapping the back of your phone is faster than moving your hand to hit that Page + increase volume Button. But maybe it’s just me; I take a lot of screenshots.
