How to programmatically take a screenshot?

Question

How can I take a screenshot of a selected area of phone-screen not by any program but from code?

Answer 1

EDIT: have mercy with the downvotes. It was true in 2010 when I answered the question.

All the programs which allow screenshots work only on rooted phones.

Answer 2

Mualig answer is very good, but I had the same problem Ewoks describes, I'm not getting the background. So sometimes is good enough and sometimes I get black text over black background (depending on the theme).

This solution is heavily based in Mualig code and the code I've found in Robotium. I'm discarding the use of drawing cache by calling directly to the draw method. Before that I'll try to get the background drawable from current activity to draw it first.

// Some constants
final static String SCREENSHOTS_LOCATIONS = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().toString() + "/screenshots/";

// Get device dimmensions
Display display = getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay();
Point size = new Point();
display.getSize(size);

// Get root view
View view = mCurrentUrlMask.getRootView();

// Create the bitmap to use to draw the screenshot
final Bitmap bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(size.x, size.y, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_4444);
final Canvas canvas = new Canvas(bitmap);

// Get current theme to know which background to use
final Activity activity = getCurrentActivity();
final Theme theme = activity.getTheme();
final TypedArray ta = theme
    .obtainStyledAttributes(new int[] { android.R.attr.windowBackground });
final int res = ta.getResourceId(0, 0);
final Drawable background = activity.getResources().getDrawable(res);

// Draw background
background.draw(canvas);

// Draw views
view.draw(canvas);

// Save the screenshot to the file system
FileOutputStream fos = null;
try {
    final File sddir = new File(SCREENSHOTS_LOCATIONS);
    if (!sddir.exists()) {
        sddir.mkdirs();
    }
    fos = new FileOutputStream(SCREENSHOTS_LOCATIONS
            + System.currentTimeMillis() + ".jpg");
    if (fos != null) {
        if (!bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 90, fos)) {
            Log.d(LOGTAG, "Compress/Write failed");
        }
        fos.flush();
        fos.close();
    }

} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 3

My solution is:

public static Bitmap loadBitmapFromView(Context context, View v) {
    DisplayMetrics dm = context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics(); 
    v.measure(MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(dm.widthPixels, MeasureSpec.EXACTLY),
            MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(dm.heightPixels, MeasureSpec.EXACTLY));
    v.layout(0, 0, v.getMeasuredWidth(), v.getMeasuredHeight());
    Bitmap returnedBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(v.getMeasuredWidth(),
            v.getMeasuredHeight(), Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
    Canvas c = new Canvas(returnedBitmap);
    v.draw(c);

    return returnedBitmap;
}

and

public void takeScreen() {
    Bitmap bitmap = ImageUtils.loadBitmapFromView(this, view); //get Bitmap from the view
    String mPath = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() + File.separator + "screen_" + System.currentTimeMillis() + ".jpeg";
    File imageFile = new File(mPath);
    OutputStream fout = null;
    try {
        fout = new FileOutputStream(imageFile);
        bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 90, fout);
        fout.flush();
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        fout.close();
    }
}

Images are saved in the external storage folder.

Answer 4

Short way is

FrameLayout layDraw = (FrameLayout) findViewById(R.id.layDraw); /*Your root view to be part of screenshot*/
layDraw.buildDrawingCache();
Bitmap bmp = layDraw.getDrawingCache();

Answer 5

Note: works only for rooted phone

Programmatically, you can run adb shell /system/bin/screencap -p /sdcard/img.png as below

Process sh = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su", null,null);
OutputStream os = sh.getOutputStream();
os.write(("/system/bin/screencap -p " + "/sdcard/img.png").getBytes("ASCII"));
os.flush();
os.close();
sh.waitFor();    

then read img.png as Bitmap and use as your wish.

Answer 6

Along with capturing screenshot,if we want to play the tone also.We can use following code

    MediaPlayer _shootMP = null;
    AudioManager manager = (AudioManager) 
    getActivity().getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE);
    manager.setStreamVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_NOTIFICATION, 
    manager.getStreamMaxVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC), 0);
    if (_shootMP == null)
        _shootMP = MediaPlayer
                .create(getActivity(),
                        Uri.parse("file:///system/media/audio/ui/camera_click.ogg"));
    if (_shootMP != null) {
        try {

            _shootMP.start();
            _shootMP.setOnCompletionListener(new OnCompletionListener() {
                @Override
                public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer arg0) {
                    // release the media
                    _shootMP.stop();
                    _shootMP.reset();
                    _shootMP.release();
                    _shootMP = null;

                }
            });
        } catch (IllegalStateException e) {
            Log.w(TAG, "Exception takeScreenShot" + e.getMessage());

        }
    }