How do you take a screenshot on an iPad with one hand by tapping something on the screen?

TidBITS Talk
1

I’m helping someone with a disability. She used to have this on her screen (I apparently set it up years ago) but it just disappeared. I can’t figure out through the immensely complicated accessibility settings how to get it back. Any ideas?

2

You can use Siri to take a screenshot. You can also set up assistive touch to put a virtual home button on the screen and set screenshot to one of the options. Settings / Accessibility / Touch.

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3

I’ll take a look again. She liked it and said there were also volume controls there. Thanks.

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4

I do a screenshot on my iPad by swiping in towards the center from the left bottom corner

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5

I just tried that on my iPad and it didn’t take a screenshot. Some gesture you set somewhere?

Anyway she fixed it with a novel, brilliant technique I never heard of before. She turned the power off and on again. :slight_smile:

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6

It works for me on a new iPad. Does the one you’re looking at have a physical home button? I suspect that it’s a feature that came with the removal of the home button,

7

No, it’s an iPad Pro 11 inch M1 from 2021. When I try what you mentioned it was just like sliding up from the bottom - I just see all the open apps.

8

Settings > General > Gestures > Left corner swipe allows me to set it as screenshot.

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9

I see what’s wrong. I was playing with Stage Manager and had that on in the Control Center. It interferes with swipe from left and right corners. When I turned Stage Manner off both the swipes worked.

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10

You can set up an iPhone (at least from model 11 forward) to do an action like that by tapping on the back of the phone. My iPad is much older so I do not know whether current iPads could also do that. (PS: I took a lot of accidental screenshots on the iPhone before I disabled the setting again!)

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I have an iPhone 13 Pro. It sounds interesting, but you answered my question about accidental screenshots. I’m sure I’ll take loads of them.

The corner swipe gesture sounds like it might be nice on an iPhone though. I wonder if that’s there.

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12

There is no back tap setting for iPad - that’s for iPhone only.

No, but, again, you can use back tap. (But if you have touch accessibility issues, I would think that this isn’t all that helpful.)

13

I don’t have touch accessibility issues. Maybe I’ll try the back tap and see how well it works. I take screenshots all the time.

Thanks.

14

Oh, you said in the first post you were helping somebody with a disability.

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15

Yes, that’s not me though. She is a participant in a weekly volunteer group I teach at. I helped her set up her iPad some years ago, before we started meeting virtually each week.

So she has a disability and loved the floating button I added for her. But she probably doesn’t have sufficient coordination for the swipe from corner.

I, on the other hand, think that’s cool, and probably an easier way to take a screenshot on an iPad that with regular buttons, because of size.

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16

Did that show up in a newer OS? I have a 2021 iPad with a home button, and gestures is not in my general settings. If I search for gestures it shows up in the search results but it’s not there. When I click on the search results all it does is open up general

Diane

17

Mine is a 2022 iPad running iPadOS 16.2. So it doesn’t have a home button.

18

Thanks Doug. It really makes more and more sense for Apple to have branched off the iOS and iPadOS operating systems because of the way the hardware ecosystems have diverged. My original iPad was, as I recall, described as a “really big iPhone with a huge screen and enormous battery” compared to an actual iPhone. I’m sure they still share a few components, but nothing like in those days.