The Chrome mobile app recently gained a handy screenshot tool, and now, Google is bringing a more robust version of this tool to the desktop. That’s right; you’ll soon gain the ability to capture, edit, and share screenshots within the Google Chrome browser.
Once this feature rolls out, Chrome users can press the Share button in their address bar, select the “screenshot” option, and capture part of a webpage. Then, they can edit and draw over this image, share it to other apps, or send it to contacts.
I got a taste of Chrome’s new screenshot tool in the Canary build of Chrome 98, and honestly, I’m surprised that this feature isn’t standard for all web browsers. Both Windows and macOS have keyboard shortcuts to trigger screenshots, of course, but Chrome’s screenshot tool feels like it will be very useful to non-tech-savvy users who just want to capture and draw over a webpage.
Of course, the feature is still in beta, and it’s buggy as all hell. The editing tool doesn’t even work yet—if you press the “Edit” button after taking a screenshot in Chrome Canary, it just takes you to a page with the word “placeholder.”
But if you want to give these tools a shot (or have them enabled for later), here’s how you do it. Bear in mind that you need the latest Chrome Canary build to get this stuff working.
- Open the Canary build of Chrome 98
- Type “chrome://flags” into the address bar and press enter.
- Search for “Desktop Screenshots” and “Desktop Screenshots Edit Mode,” enable both flags.
- Search for “Desktop sharing hub in Omnibox,” enable it.
- Restart Chrome.
You should now see a “screenshot” option when you press the Share button in Chrome Canary’s address bar (or Omnibox, as Google calls it).
Again, we don’t know when these features are coming to the normal version of Chrome, or even when the screenshot edit tool will start working. But we’re happy to see Google work on a feature that could greatly benefit average users.
Source: Real Mi Central
