How to Take a Screenshot on Pixel Smartphones

In Summary

Screenshotting is the easiest way to capture the contents of your phone’s screen to reference later or share with others.
If you’ve got a new Pixel smartphone, Google offers multiple ways to capture a screenshot so you can choose a method based on your preference.
In addition, you also get a built-in functionality for taking scrolling screenshots, which comes in handy when you want to capture vertically-stretched content on your phone’s screen.

Screenshotting is one of the most useful features on smartphones. It allows you to capture the contents of your phone’s screen to reference later or share with others.

Knowing how to take a screenshot on your phone, therefore, is crucial because of this. Although most Android smartphones use hardware combinations for capturing screenshots, the key combination varies from device to device. Similarly, depending on the skin running on your device, you may also have a few other ways to take a screenshot.

If you’ve recently bought the all-new Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro, or one of the economical offerings, the Pixel 6a, and this is your first time using a Google phone, here’s a guide describing all the ways to take a screenshot on a Pixel smartphone.

Table of Contents

4 Ways to Take Screenshots on Pixel Phones

Method 1: Take a Screenshot on Pixel Phones Using Hardware Buttons

Starting with the most common approach for taking screenshots on any smartphone—the hardware button combination—Google employs the Power + Volume Down button combination for taking screenshots on Pixel devices.

Here’s how to use it to take a screenshot:

Open the app or screen you want to screenshot.
Press and hold the Power button and the Volume Down key on the phone’s right side until the screen flashes.
Let go of the buttons, and it will take a screenshot.

A preview of the captured screenshot will appear in the lower-left corner of the screen soon after the screenshot is taken. You can tap on it to view and edit/annotate it. Or, click the Share button to share the screenshot with others directly.

Method 2: Take Screenshots on a Pixel Phone Through Multitasking Menu

If you don’t want to use the hardware buttons to take a screenshot, perhaps because you’ve broken one of them, or you want an easier way to capture your screen, you can use the screenshot function in the multitasking menu to screenshot the screen instead.

Depending on whether you’re using gesture-based navigation or button-based navigation, you can use this method to capture the screen like this:

Make sure the app (and the screen you want to capture) is open and accessible in the multitasking menu.
Bring up the multitasking menu.
On gesture-based navigation: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and hold.
On button-based navigation: Tap the Overview button—the one with the window icon.
Scroll through the open apps and bring the one you want to capture in focus, i.e., to the front.
Click the Screenshot button located at the bottom of the page, and it will take a screenshot of the screen.

Similar to the previous method, this one will also show you a preview window of the captured screenshot so you can quickly preview it and share it with others.

Method 3: Take a Screenshot on Pixel Phones Using Quick Tap

Quick Tap is a relatively new feature on Android. As its name suggests, this feature allows you to tap on the back of your phone to perform certain operations. It even works if you’ve put a case on your device.

Follow these steps to set up Quick Tap and use it to take a screenshot on your Pixel device:

Open Settings on your Pixel phone.
Scroll down, select System, and go to Gestures > Quick Tap to start actions.
Toggle on the button for Use Quick Tap if it isn’t already.
Under Tap back of phone twice to, select the Take screenshot radio button.

Now, whenever you need to take a screenshot on your Pixel phone, you can capture the screenshot by opening the screen/app you want to capture and double-tapping the back of your phone.

As soon as you do this, it will take a screenshot of your screenshot, and you’ll see a preview for the same in a floating window in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

Method 4: Take a Screenshot on Pixel Phone Using Google Assistant

Google Assistant simplifies performing a lot of operations on Google devices, including the Pixel smartphone. Taking screenshots is one such operation that lets you capture your phone’s screen using voice, so you can take a screenshot without touching your phone.

For this, you need Hey Google enabled on your device. If it isn’t, here’s how to turn it on:

Open the Google app.
Click on the profile icon in the top-right corner and select Settings.
Choose Google Assistant.
Click on Hey Google & Voice Match and toggle on the option for Hey Google.

Once done, here’s how you can take a screenshot on a Pixel smartphone using Google Assistant:

Open the screen whose screenshot you want to capture.
Speak Hey Google into your device’s microphone to bring up Assistant, and say Take a screenshot.

Google Assistant will take a screenshot of the screen and save it to the gallery on your phone.

Also on TechPP

How to Take a Scrolling Screenshot on Pixel Devices

Starting with Android 12, Google introduced the ability to take a scrolling screenshot on Pixel phones on apps that support it. Scrolling screenshots come in handy when you want to capture vertically-stretched content displayed on your phone’s screen.

Here’s how you can take scrolling screenshots on a Pixel phone:

Open the app/screen you want to capture.
Press and hold the Power and Volume Down buttons together, and release them as soon as the screenshot is captured.
Click on the Capture more button beside the screenshot preview.
Use the vertical and horizontal accented ends on the crop guidelines to select the area of capture vertically and horizontally, respectively.
Once you’ve chosen the area to screenshot, hit the Save button to capture and save its screenshot.

Captured screenshots will appear in your photos library. You can access it using the Google Photos app or any third-party gallery app of your choice.

Never Miss a Chance to Capture Something Important Again

Capturing the contents displayed on your phone’s screen is a useful functionality that can come in handy on numerous occasions. Thankfully, as you’ve seen above, Google offers multiple ways to take a screenshot on a Pixel smartphone so you can capture your screen’s content no matter whether it’s from an app, a website, or a video clip.

After you’ve captured the screenshot, you can annotate or edit it. You may want to do this to highlight the important stuff, get rid of unimportant things, or include text to explain what’s going on in the image for better context.