I was among the happiest people on Earth when Apple announced the ability to save full page screenshots with iOS 13. However, when I first used that feature, it was a bit disappointing. iOS 13’s long or Full-Page screenshot feature only works with Safari and even then, it’s a bit limited as it saves those pages as PDFs. This is not what I want from long screenshots. Like everyone else, I want to take scrolling screenshots of my iMessage and Facebook chats so that I can share or store them easily.
To take long screenshots on iOS, you could either use apps such as Tailor or Picsew, or you could use Siri Shortcuts and get the job done for free. The shortcut I’m writing about is slightly rough around the edges but it does work fairly well if you know how to work around its limitations.
The one major limitation of this shortcut is that you will have to make sure your screenshots don’t have overlapping content because you can’t adjust and crop screenshots to eliminate duplication. I work around this either by manually cropping screenshots in Photos or being extra careful when taking screenshots. Other than this, this shortcut works really well so let’s get right to it.
How to Take Long Screenshots on iPhone
I’ve written about the basics of Siri Shortcuts and how to install shortcuts on your iOS device. Be sure to read that piece in case you’re not sure what this is all about.
- Download the Long Screenshots shortcut by tapping Get Shortcut on the Routine Hub page. I’m linking to Routine Hub because it’ll always display the latest version of this shortcut as opposed to the iCloud page which may stop working or have a couple of unpatched bugs.
- Take the screenshots you need to stitch into a single image.
- Open the Shortcuts app, tap the My Shortcuts tab, and tap Long Screenshots. The shortcut will ask for permission to access Routine Hub and iCloud Drive. The former keeps the shortcut updated and the latter allows you to save screenshots to iCloud Drive.
- Now tap Start Long Screenshot.
- This will open your screenshots via the photo picker and you can select all the screenshots you want to stitch. Tap Done after selecting the screenshots.
- Tap No, start a new crop. Now tap OK.
- Now begins the part where you crop the screenshots. You’ll see a preview of one screenshot and you should tap Done to open cropping options.
- First you’ll be cropping the top of all screenshots. This allows you to remove the status bar, address bar, or other menu elements and keep only the important parts of any screenshot. You can choose to crop between 10 and 100 pixels at a time and each time you’ll be shown a preview of what the screenshots will look like after cropping. Repeat the cropping until you’re satisfied and then tap All done with this part.
- Now it’s time to crop the bottom of the screenshots. Repeat the previous step.
- Next, you can choose if you want the header and the footer on the first and last screenshot. This will keep the status bar, tab bar, and other menu elements in the first and last screenshots only. I always tap Yes here because it makes my long screenshots look nicer.
- Now you’ll see a preview of your long screenshot. Tap Done.
- Select if you want to save the image, delete it, or share it without saving.
- The final option allows you to save these crop settings for future screenshots. If you save this, steps 8 and 9 will take a lot less time in the future.
This shortcut is a great example of how Siri Shortcuts can add really useful features to iOS. I’ll be writing about several more shortcuts in the coming days, so watch this space to learn about some more interesting things you can do with these amazing automation tools in iOS.