Apple Watch How-To: Take and share screenshots from your Apple Watch ~ Apple Juice

Thursday 4 June 2015

Apple Watch How-To: Take and share screenshots from your Apple Watch

Now that you have your Apple Watch, you might be curious to know how to take a screenshot from your your new device. The process is a little different from taking screenshots on an iPhone or iPad and the photos aren’t automatically saved to the watch, but you may want to screenshot fitness and activity achievements or show friends your customized Apple Watch face. In this how-to article I will quickly discuss how to take a screenshot on your Apple Watch and how you can make the process easier.

On the Apple Watch, go to the screen you want to capture. Then you are going to press the Digital Crown and the side button at the same time. I recommend holding the watch with your thumb, putting the pointer finger on the Digital Crown and the middle finger on the side button. When you do this, the screen flashes white for a brief second, you hear the same shutter sound that you are used to hearing when you do a screenshot on your iOS device, and feel a tiny light bump on your wrist.

To find the screenshot, you are going to go to the Photos app on your iPhone. It will be in the bottom of your pictures under All Photos if you are using iCloud Photo Library. If you are not using iCloud Photo Library, the screenshot from your watch will be at the bottom of the Camera Roll. From here you can share the screenshot just like you would a photo you captured directly from your iPhone.

By default, the Photos app that’s on the Apple Watch syncs the photos that you selected as your Favorites. So if you were to go to the Photos app on your Apple Watch, you will not see the screenshot you just took. You can change that behavior by opening up the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and selecting Photos. Then under Photo Syncing, you can select which album you want to sync to your watch.

If you choose Recently Added, the screenshots you take on your watch (and each photo you take on your iPhone), will now appear in the Photos app on the Apple Watch. Whichever album you choose to sync from your iPhone, those pictures are still viewable from your Apple Watch even when it is out of range of the iPhone as long as it has recently synced. Here you can also change the limit as to how many photos will be stored on your watch under Photos Limit.