How to take screenshots on a smart TV

If you like take screenshots on your smart TV -as you take screenshots on your computer or mobile phone– to be able to save images from your favorite series or movies, store important information from a program or menu, or even share interesting content with family, the steps you must follow will depend on the device you have .

Some televisions allow you to do it simply by performing button combinations from the remote control, but in others you will need to use external applications or complementary devices to achieve your goal.

Steps to take a screenshot on your smart TV

In this article, you will find a detailed guide with the step by step that you must follow in each case to take all the captures you need.

On Chromecast, Android TV or Google TV

If you have a Smart TV that has Android TV as the operating system, you can take screenshots as follows:

-Open the app store on your television -Google Play Store- and look for an application called “Button Mapper”. Download and install it.

-Now install another tool called “FX File Explorer”, which will help you manage all the files on your television.

-When you have finished downloading, first open the Button Mapper app and grant the accessibility permissions it requests. To do this, go to “Settings”, click on “System” and click on the Accessibility strip. There you should find Button Mapper and you can enable the corresponding permissions.

-The next thing is to assign a button for the screenshot. Go to Button Mapper and select the home button (or whatever you prefer) and then check “Customize.”

-Configure the “Long press” option to correctly execute the screenshot. Once this is done, you will be able to take the screenshots you want simply by pressing the button you defined. Every time you press and hold the button a screenshot will be taken.

-When you want to access them you must open “FX File Explorer” and navigate to the “Main Storage” option. Then click on Pictures and you will see a folder that indicates Screenshots, where you can see all the screenshots taken. If you use other file browsing apps on Android, such as Solid Explorer, you can search your screenshots using keywords.

On Apple TV

If you have an Apple TV you can take screenshots as follows:

-First you must make sure that your Apple TV, as well as your Mac (or PC with QuickTime installed) are connected to the same W-iFi network.

-Then open QuickTime Player on your Mac. If you use Windows, you must download the application by visiting the official Apple website.

-When you are in QuickTime simply select File and then click on New Video Recording.

-When the recording options are displayed you must select your Apple TV as the input source.

-You will see a notification on your Apple TV screen that you have to accept so that QuickTime can show you the content. Once you do, you can take a screenshot of your Apple TV using the QuickTime Player features.

If you only want to take occasional captures, you have the possibility of using screen recording and then you can extract the frame you need in the form of an image.

Using a Windows computer

You also have the possibility of using your computer with Windows operating system to be able to take screenshots from your smart TV. You just have to do this procedure:

-Activate USB debugging on your Smart TV. To do this, go to “Settings” and click on “Device Preferences”.

-Select the Information option and press the Build option seven times to enable developer mode. In Developer Options, enable the USB Debugging option.

-Now connect your TV and computer to the same Wi-Fi network.

-Download the Android SDK or Android Studio on your PC to use ADB (Android Debug Bridge).

-Now open the command console (Terminal in Windows) and use the command “adb connect ipaddress”.

-Where it says “ip address” you have to put the IP of your television. To find out what your IP is, simply go to the network configuration section and it will be reflected there.

-Now you can take the screenshot using the command “adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/captura.png”. If you want to transfer it to your computer you have to write “adb pull /sdcard/captura.png”.

-All screenshots will be saved in the folder where you have executed the ADB command. Typically inside the Android SDK directory.

If you find it too difficult to remember these commands easily, you can consider creating some automated scripts that will help make this process a little faster.

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