When taking a screenshot of your screen, you should start using these 7 iPhone Screenshot Secrets.

The iPhone’s screenshot feature can be useful in a variety of situations, but it can be even more useful than you think. It’s time to put your knowledge of the iPhone’s screenshot feature to the test if you thought you knew everything there is to know about it.

While many of these secret screenshot functions have been available on iOS for some time, some of the instructions mention that iOS 16 is necessary for certain actions, such renaming screenshot file names from the share sheet. These advices are all applicable to iPadOS as well.

1. Highlight Things Better

You can highlight, enclose, or draw a circle around an item in your screenshot if you need to call attention to it specifically. Nonetheless, the magnifying tool is the best choice if you want to showcase anything little. Even better, you may use the opacity tool in conjunction with it to make the subject stand out.

To enlarge an item in the screenshot editor, focus the magnifying circle on it by tapping the plus (+) symbol in the markup toolbar and selecting Magnifier. The size of the perimeter can then be adjusted by selecting a color and tapping the forms icon. Use the green dot to reduce or enlarge the subject, and the blue dot to diminish or expand the bubble.

If you’re happy, hit the plus (+) sign once again, select Opacity, and then move the slider’s dot to the right to transparentize the background behind the magnified bubble. White will show through the translucent layer because the screenshot editor utilizes a white basis. The surrounding image will still be visible at maximum transparency for reference.

2. Share Screenshots Quickly

Tapping the thumbnail preview that displays after a screenshot is only a smart idea if you want to crop or annotate the image first when you capture screenshots primarily to share them with contacts or apps. If not, it is considerably more effective to long-press the preview until its border vanishes. This will instantly open the share sheet. Before AirDropping, messaging, or sharing the image in any means, you can easily rename the file.

3. Or Share Screenshots Even Faster

If you don’t care about titling your screenshots before sharing them, you can share them even more quickly by dragging and dropping them into the appropriate app.

To display the share sheet, long-press the screenshot’s thumbnail preview as you normally would. Drag the preview away as soon as the border around it vanishes to stop the share sheet from opening. When you see the addition (+) sign appear, indicating that you can add the image, use a different finger to open the target app, browse to the location where you want to add the image, and then drop it.

4. Get Rid of the Thumbnail Preview

Whether you take a screenshot using your hardware buttons, Siri, the Back Tap, Voice Control, or AssistiveTouch, you’ll almost always see thumbnail previews. But, if you never edit or share screenshots immediately away, you can avoid it by making a customized shortcut.

Simply use the “Take Screenshot” and “Save to Picture Album” actions to create a shortcut, then give it the Back Tap action. You will always see a flash of light without the ensuing thumbnail in the corner when you take a screenshot on your iPhone by pressing the rear of the device twice or three times. A Shortcuts banner notification will appear, but you may easily turn it off.

5. Name Screenshots as You Take Them

You may rename screenshots before they appear in your Photos app if you’re sick of seeing the file name IMG 1234.PNG anytime you AirDrop them to your Mac, add them to another app like Notes or Files, or in any other way. The one drawback to this is that the search function in the Photos app does not take into account filename characteristics, so if that’s what you want, you’d have to stay with captions.

If you want the file to have a certain name in the Photos app, sharing and renaming the screenshot from the share sheet will not work. You’ll need to take a shortcut instead.

Install the Name Screenshot shortcut in the Shortcuts app and then link the Back Tap gesture to it. The Name Screenshot app will launch whenever you tap the back of your iPhone twice or three times, taking a screenshot and requesting a new file name. Its file name in the Pictures app will be whatever name you enter.

6. Draw Perfect Shapes

The plus (+) icon in the toolbar allows you to add properly drawn squares, circles, arrows, and comment boxes, but you can also draw other forms flawlessly with a conventional pen, marker, or pencil. Simply sketch them out as normal, then hold your finger down on the screen to let iOS automatically transform your imperfect drawing into a perfect one.

7. Capture Unscreenshotable Elements

Regular screenshots on your iPhone cannot capture several visible on-screen components, including screenshot thumbnail previews, Classic Invert, Smart Invert, and some Zoom effects. Thus, you must utilize QuickTime Player on your Mac to capture interface and accessibility elements that are not screen captureable.

Depending on the available ports, use a Lightning to USB or Lightning to USB-C cable to connect your iPhone to your Mac. On a macOS computer, launch QuickTime Player, select “File,” and then “New Movie Recording.” When the camera feed from your Mac appears, select your iPhone under “Screen” by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the record button.

The resolution of the iPhone screenshot can then be changed by modifying the QuickTime window size. Then, hit the Space bar after pressing Shift-Command-4. If you want to remove the drop-shadow from the QuickTime window’s window capture, hold down the Option key when clicking.

By default, screenshots are saved to your Desktop, but after pressing Command-Shift-5, you can select a different place by clicking “Settings” on the screenshot menu.