Device Screen Shots
You can take a screen shot of any emulator or hardware device running under
Eclipse.
- Switch Eclipse to DDMS mode using the Open Perspective
dropdown in the upper
right (small window symbol with + on it). In this mode Eclipse should look like
the following figure.
- The running devices and emulators are listed in the Devices
window on the
upper left. Select the desired device or emulator. In the above figure, the
device TA5380467L, which is a Motorola Backflip phone running Android 1.5 that
is connected to the computer by USB, has been selected.
- Be certain that the selected device or emulator is displaying the screen
that you wish to capture. Click the square multicolor picture-looking icon at
the upper right of the Devices window. This will pop up a Device Screen Capture
window, with an image of the screen that was captured.
- You may use the menu on that window to manipulate the image. Most important,
you can click the Save button
and save the image as a .png file on your
computer. The left figure below shows a screen capture of an app launched
from Eclipse on the Maps2.2 virtual device and the right figure shows a screen capture of the the same app launched on a
Motorola Backflip phone.
- You can return to the normal programming perspective by selecting Java from
the Open Perspective dropdown in the upper right.
The ability to take a screen shot of any actual device or emulator is very useful in documenting your Android programming accomplishments (or anything you can display if you have an actual device).
