How to take screen shots of the iPhone (intel / PPC Mac/Windows/Vista)

(intel / PPC Mac)

What was used: iPhone on 1.1.2 firmware, iTunes 7.5

Erica Sadun over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog wrote a nice program for capturing the screen of the iPhone. This is great for those of us who mod our iPhones, so we can now show off our work instead of having to settle for not so great snap shots of our iPhone in less than ideal lighting conditions. You can read her article here. I realize there are several incarnations of this program, none of which I've had the time to figure out, so I'm covering the original method. There is also a version on the Installer, but I don't understand why someone would need to take screenshots on the go. I'm assuming you've jailbroken/activated and installed Installer and/or SSH on your iPhone already.

1. Download the screenshot program here. Put screenshot into your phonedmg folder (or wherever you'd like).


2. On your iPhone, press Home, "Settings", "General", "Auto-Lock", then select "Never". This will keep the iPhone from disconnecting the SSH connection while working on this install.


3. Start Fugu. Navigate to where screenshot is on your computer on the left side. Then navigate to /usr//bin on the right side. Drag the screenshot file to the /usr/bin folder.


4. Now that the program is installed, it needs to have its permissions set so that it is executable (i.e. it will "run"). Right click screenshot and select "Get Info".


5. Check the three Execute check boxes. Then click Apply and close the window.


6. To take a screen shot, you need to open the Terminal program on your Mac (Fugu doesn't have execute ability built in). Login in to the iPhone via SSH: ssh -l root (YOUR IP), then enter your password. Type: screenshot.


7. The pictures are stored in .png format in the /tmp directory. They don't get saved incremently, they will continue to overwrite the previous file, so you'll need to save them to your computer right away. You can either just drag them out of the program onto the desktop or copy them to the left side.

(Windows XP / Vista)

1. Download the screenshot program here. Put screenshot into your phonedmg folder (or wherever you'd like).


2. On your iPhone, press Home, Settings, General, Auto-Lock, then select Never. This will keep the iPhone from disconnecting the SSH connection while working on this install.


3. Start WinSCP. Navigate to your phonedmg folder and to the /usr/bin folder on the iPhone.


4. Drag screenshot into the bin folder. Confirm this action by clicking Copy.


5. Right click the screenshot file in the bin window, and select Properties.


6. Make your settings match these. Either check the three check boxes next to the Xs or enter 0755 in the Octal box, then click OK.


7. When you have your iPhone ready to get its picture taken, right click the screenshot file, select Custom Commands, then Execute. The picture is taken immediately.


8. The picture will be saved in the /tmp directory and the file name will be foo_0.png.


9. The file can be copied via WinSCP, or you can just drag it out of the window to your desktop. A pop up will ask for confirmation of where you want to send the file, click Copy.


10. These screenshots look fantastic!