How do I take a full screen Screenshot in Swift?

by

Instead of just throwing the answer out there, let me explain what your current code does and how to modify it to capture the full screen.

UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(view.frame.size)

This line of code creates a new image context with the same size as view. The main thing to take away here is that the new image context is the same size as view. Unless you want to capture a low resolution (non-retina) version of your application, you should probably be using UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions instead. Then you can pass 0.0 to get the same scale factor as the devices main screen. 

view.layer.renderInContext(UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext())

This line of code will render the view’s layer into the current graphics context (which is the context you just created). The main thing to take away here is that only view (and its subviews) are being drawn into the image context.

let image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()

This line of code creates an UIImage object from what has been drawn into the graphics context. 

UIGraphicsEndImageContext()

This line of code ends the image context. It’s clean up (you created the context and should remove it as well.

The result is an image that is the same size as view, with view and its subviews drawn into it.

If you want to draw everything into the image, then you should create an image that is the size of the screen and draw everything that is on screen into it. In practice, you are likely just talking about everything in the “key window” of your application. Since UIWindow is a subclass of UIView, it can be drawn into a image context as well.

More Related Contents:

  1. Loading/Downloading image from URL on Swift
  2. Convert between UIImage and Base64 string
  3. UIImage(contentsOfFile:) returning nil despite file existing in caches directory [duplicate]
  4. How do I resize the UIImage to reduce upload image size
  5. Swift PNG Image being saved with incorrect orientation
  6. How to convert a UIView to an image
  7. How can I change image tintColor in iOS and WatchKit
  8. How to Resize image in Swift?
  9. How do I add text to an image in iOS Swift?
  10. How to compress of reduce the size of an image before uploading to Parse as PFFile? (Swift)
  11. Create UIImage with solid color in Swift
  12. UIImageView – How to get the file name of the image assigned?
  13. How do I get the color of a pixel in a UIImage with Swift?
  14. Change color of certain pixels in a UIImage
  15. Cut a UIImage into a circle
  16. Rotating UIImage in Swift
  17. Resize UIImage to 200x200pt/px
  18. Screenshot in Swift iOS?
  19. How to set image for bar button with swift?
  20. Save images with phimagemanager to custom album?
  21. Get pixel data as array from UIImage/CGImage in swift
  22. Screenshot showing up blank – Swift
  23. How can I color a UIImage in Swift?
  24. Pixel Array to UIImage in Swift
  25. Swift playgrounds with UIImage
  26. Convert UIImage to NSData and convert back to UIImage in Swift?
  27. Set custom images to the UIBarButtonItem but it doesn’t show any image
  28. How do you create a UIImage View Programmatically – Swift
  29. How to merge two UIImages?
  30. Passing data back from view controllers Xcode

Leave a Comment