How to capture the android device screen content

Question

Possible Duplicate    How to programatically take a screenshot on Android        How to capture the android device screen content and make  an image file using the snapshot data  Which API should I use or where could I find related resources   BTW  not camera snapshot  but device screen

User · Answer

if you want to do screen capture from Java code in Android app AFAIK you must have Root provileges

User · Answer

Use the following code               Bitmap bitmap  View v1   MyView getRootView    v1 setDrawingCacheEnabled true   bitmap   Bitmap createBitmap v1 getDrawingCache     v1 setDrawingCacheEnabled false     Here MyView is the View through which we need include in the screen  You can also get DrawingCache from of any View this way  without getRootView      There is also another way   If we having ScrollView as root view then its better to use following code   LayoutInflater inflater    LayoutInflater  this getSystemService LAYOUT INFLATER SERVICE   FrameLayout root    FrameLayout  inflater inflate R layout activity main  null      activity main is UI xml  file we used in our Activity class  FrameLayout is root view of my UI xml  file  root setDrawingCacheEnabled true   Bitmap bitmap   getBitmapFromView this getWindow   findViewById R id frameLayout       here give id of our root layout  here its my FrameLayout s id  root setDrawingCacheEnabled false     Here is the getBitmapFromView   method  public static Bitmap getBitmapFromView View view              Define a bitmap with the same size as the view         Bitmap returnedBitmap   Bitmap createBitmap view getWidth    view getHeight   Bitmap Config ARGB 8888             Bind a canvas to it         Canvas canvas   new Canvas returnedBitmap             Get the view s background         Drawable bgDrawable  view getBackground            if  bgDrawable  null                 has background drawable  then draw it on the canvas             bgDrawable draw canvas           else                does not have background drawable  then draw white background on the canvas             canvas drawColor Color WHITE              draw the view on the canvas         view draw canvas             return the bitmap         return returnedBitmap          It will display entire screen including content hidden in your ScrollView  UPDATED AS ON 20-04-2016 There is another better way to take screenshot Here I have taken screenshot of WebView   WebView w   new WebView this       w setWebViewClient new WebViewClient                 public void onPageFinished final WebView webView  String url                 new Handler   postDelayed new Runnable                     Override                 public void run                         webView measure View MeasureSpec makeMeasureSpec                                      View MeasureSpec UNSPECIFIED  View MeasureSpec UNSPECIFIED                               View MeasureSpec makeMeasureSpec 0  View MeasureSpec UNSPECIFIED                        webView layout 0  0  webView getMeasuredWidth                                webView getMeasuredHeight                         webView setDrawingCacheEnabled true                       webView buildDrawingCache                        Bitmap bitmap   Bitmap createBitmap webView getMeasuredWidth                                webView getMeasuredHeight    Bitmap Config ARGB 8888                        Canvas canvas   new Canvas bitmap                       Paint paint   new Paint                        int height   bitmap getHeight                        canvas drawBitmap bitmap  0  height  paint                       webView draw canvas                        if  bitmap    null                            try                               String filePath   Environment getExternalStorageDirectory                                        toString                                OutputStream out   null                              File file   new File filePath    webviewScreenShot png                                out   new FileOutputStream file                                bitmap compress Bitmap CompressFormat PNG  50  out                               out flush                                out close                                bitmap recycle                              catch  Exception e                                e printStackTrace                                                                                     1000                       Hope this helps

User · Answer

For newer Android platforms  one can execute a system utility screencap in  system bin to get the screenshot without root permission  You can try  system bin screencap -h to see how to use it under adb or any shell   By the way  I think this method is only good for single snapshot   If we want to capture multiple frames for screen play  it will be too slow  I don t know if there exists any other approach for a faster screen capture

User · Answer

AFAIK  All of the methods currently to capture a screenshot of android use the  dev graphics fb0 framebuffer  This includes ddms  It does require root to read from this stream  ddms uses adbd to request the information  so root is not required as adb has the permissions needed to request the data from  dev graphics fb0    The framebuffer contains 2   frames  of RGB565 images  If you are able to read the data  you would have to know the screen resolution to know how many bytes are needed to get the image  each pixel is 2 bytes  so if the screen res was 480x800  you would have to read 768 000 bytes for the image  since a 480x800 RGB565 image has 384 000 pixels

User · Answer

You can try the following library  Android Screenshot Library  ASL  enables to programmatically capture screenshots from Android devices without requirement of having root access privileges  Instead  ASL utilizes a native service running in the background  started via the Android Debug Bridge  ADB  once per device boot

User · Answer

Framebuffer seems the way to go  it will not always contain 2  frames like mentioned by Ryan Conrad  In my case it contained only one  I guess it depends on the frame display size    I tried to read the framebuffer continuously but it seems to return for a fixed amount of bytes read  In my case that is  3 410 432  bytes  which is enough to store a display frame of 854 480 RGBA  3 279 360 bytes   Yes  the frame in binary outputed from fb0 is RGBA in my device  This will most likely depend from device to device  This will be important for you to decode it     In my device  dev graphics fb0 permissions are so that only root and users from group graphics can read the fb0  graphics is a restricted group so you will probably only access fb0 with a rooted phone using su command    Android apps have the user id  uid  app    and group id  guid  app       adb shell has uid shell and guid shell  which has much more permissions than an app  You can actually check those permissions at  system permissions platform xml  This means you will be able to read fb0 in the adb shell without root but you will not read it within the app without root   Also  giving READ FRAME BUFFER and or ACCESS SURFACE FLINGER permissions on AndroidManifest xml will do nothing for a regular app because these will only work for  signature  apps

User · Answer

According to this link  it is possible to use ddms in the tools directory of the android sdk to take screen captures   To do this within an application  and not during development   there are also applications to do so  But as  zed 0xff points out it certainly requires root

User · Answer

Based on Android source code    At the C   side  the SurfaceFlinger implements the captureScreen API   This is exposed over the binder IPC interface  returning each time a new ashmem area that contains the raw pixels from the screen   The actual screenshot is taken through OpenGL   For the system C   clients  the interface is exposed through the ScreenshotClient class  defined in  lt surfaceflinger client SurfaceComposerClient h gt  for Android  lt  4 1  for Android   4 1 use  lt gui SurfaceComposerClient h gt   Before JB  to take a screenshot in a C   program  this was enough   ScreenshotClient ssc  ssc update      With JB and multiple displays  it becomes slightly more complicated   ssc update      android  SurfaceComposerClient  getBuiltInDisplay          android  ISurfaceComposer  eDisplayIdMain      Then you can access it   do something with raw bits ssc getPixels    ssc getSize            Using the Android source code  you can compile your own shared library to access that API  and then expose it through JNI to Java   To create a screen shot form your app  the app has to have the READ FRAME BUFFER permission  But even then  apparently you can create screen shots only from system applications  i e  ones that are signed with the same key as the system    This part I still don t quite understand  since I m not familiar enough with the Android Permissions system    Here is a piece of code  for JB 4 1   4 2    include  lt utils RefBase h gt   include  lt binder IBinder h gt   include  lt binder MemoryHeapBase h gt   include  lt gui ISurfaceComposer h gt   include  lt gui SurfaceComposerClient h gt   static void do save const char  filename  const void  buf  size t size        int out   open filename  O RDWR O CREAT  0666       int len   write out  buf  size       printf  Wrote  d bytes to out  n   len       close out      int main int ac  char   av        android  ScreenshotClient ssc      const void  pixels      size t size      int buffer index       if ssc update          android  SurfaceComposerClient  getBuiltInDisplay              android  ISurfaceComposer  eDisplayIdMain      NO ERROR            printf  Captured  w  d  h  d  format  d n            ssc getWidth    ssc getHeight    ssc getFormat             size   ssc getSize            do save av 1   pixels  size             else         printf   screen shot client Captured Failed        return 0

[android] How to capture the android device screen content?

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