The functionality of Android has always been broader than that of iOS. Notification shade, control center, widgets, replacement of standard applications with third-party – all these and many other features appeared on Android earlier and only then, after a while, migrated to iOS. This went on for quite a long time, until Apple got tired, and she did not dare to change the balance of power in the market of mobile operating systems in her favor. As a result, it turned out that iOS became the leader, and Android was in the position of catching up, justifying itself by the complexity of the implementation of even such mechanisms as a screenshot of the entire page.
Scrolling screenshots are a mechanism that has been asking for itself for a long time.
Due to the fact that the share of clean Android is quite small, and most users use the shells that are produced by smartphone manufacturers, many were unaware that the stock version of the OS never had the function of creating scrolling screenshots. In the shells, this was possible, but in the Android itself – not. Until recently, users were not particularly embarrassed by this, because, after all, if you want an extended set of functions, choose a third-party shell and do not blather. But at some point, users decided that this could not continue and began to demand from Google to implement the function they needed.
Scrollable screenshot at Android
Already in all shells it is there, but in a clean one Android it is not
Google didn't hesitate to answer. Someone from the company's employees wrote on the technical support forum that the implementation of the mechanism for scrolling screenshots on Android is technically impossible. This announcement, which was obviously calculated as a sedative for the public, literally turned it on. There was no one who would not criticize Google and point out to her how to develop correctly Android. Of course, it was impossible to leave it this way, someone with an older post refuted the previous statement and promised that the scrolling screenshots on Android would appear, but not immediately, but with one of the next updates.
Logically, this update should have been Android 11, whose release, as we now know, is scheduled for early September. After all, this is generally the only functional update that Google has planned to release for its OS this year. But what was the surprise of the users when it turned out that neither in the preliminary nor in the test assembly of the operating system a mechanism for taking a screenshot of the entire page as a whole did not appear. Naturally, people started asking questions and demanding answers from Google. Fortunately, he did not keep himself waiting.
Why you can't take a screenshot of the entire page
However, Google has been working on the implementation of this mechanism for a long time.
Instead of quickly making the mechanism work in only one or two applications, the goal of our developers is that any application can connect to it and take scrolling screenshots, regardless of whether their creators provided such an opportunity or not. . We have investigated the nature of scrolling screenshots throughout the development process of Android R and plan to develop a special system component that will be available in all shells and in as many applications as possible. You can see how this component takes shape if you examine the current AOSP build, – posted by Google developers on Reddit.
Frankly, the idea that the developers are trying to implement is not superficial at all. They decided to implement a much deeper technique for taking screenshots, giving this opportunity to users of applications that have a scrolling interface. Indeed, even on iOS, where the function of creating scrolling screenshots has been available for a long time, it does not work in all applications. Google wants to solve this problem and maximize its scope. Well, if this turns out to be candy, I'm willing to wait.