On iOS devices taking screenshots is super easy. Just press the home + on/off button at the same time and snap! There’s your screenshot. But what happens if you want to snap a screenshot of a specific area of your screen as opposed to the entire screen? You can take a screenshot of your entire screen, go to Photos.app, select the screenshot, tap on edit, use the crop tool OR you can use Snapper, a new Cydia tweak that allows you to tap on the screen, drag to highlight an area and snap a screenshot of your selection. Snapper is basically the iOS equivalent of CMD+Shift+4 on OS X.
Why would you want to take a screenshot of just a specific area of your screen? Well most probably for reference. Let me explain… when taking a screenshot using Snapper, the screenshot stays on top of every screen until you dismiss it ( as seen in the screenshots above ). Once you take a screenshot using Snapper, you can use the two-finger pinch gesture to zoom in an out of the screenshot.
To dismiss the screenshot you can either use the assigned Activator action to invoke Snapper or tap and hold on the screenshot. When you tap and hold you will get a pop-up menu from where you can close, save, save and close, copy or copy and close the screenshot.
Using ‘save’ or ‘save and close’, Snapper will save the screenshot to your Camera Roll. Using ‘copy’ or copy and close’, Snapper will copy the screenshot to your clipboard so you can paste it in your emails, text messages etc.
The tweak comes with its own dedicated preference pane in the Settings.app but there’s not much you can do there. One essential thing you need to in Snapper’s settings is to assign an Activator action for triggering Snapper. You can also choose to add shadow and/or a border to your screenshot, but that’s up to you. I recommand you have at least one of the two turned on, otherwise you won’t be able to see your screenshot until you switch to a new screen ( or scroll if possible ).
If you want to give Snapper a try, the tweak is available for $0.99 on Cydia Store via BigBoss repo…
