How to take a screenshot on Wear OS 4

Prior to Wear OS 4, if you wanted to take a screenshot of your smartwatch display you had to go through this whole cumbersome process. It required you going into the app and tapping a few menus to get the screenshot. Which would then be saved in the app that you could then transfer to your photo gallery.

With Wear OS 4 Google is making this simpler and more convenient. And dare I say it, faster. Not by much, mind you. And if I’m being completely honest things could have been even easier than they are now. Even with the improvements. When it comes to taking screenshots on smartwatches, Samsung still proves to be the best with its Galaxy Watch devices. As all you have to do is press and hold both the power button and the action button simultaneously for a few seconds. The screenshot then automatically transfers to your connected to smartphone. Done and done.

With Wear OS 4 on the Pixel Watch 2 it’s not quite that simple, but it is better than before since the process cuts out the requirement of the Wear OS app entirely. If you’re wondering how to take a screenshot on a Wear OS 4 device, like the Pixel Watch 2 (this excludes the Galaxy Watch devices on Wear OS 4 since they have their own method), we’ll walk you through the steps with this guide. The process is pretty quick and there aren’t too many things you need to do. With that’ let’s get into it.

How to take a screenshot on Wear OS 4

For the purposes of this how-to guide, we’ll be using the Pixel Watch 2 as an example. This will also work for the Pixel Watch since it has the same buttons. Keep in mind though that the process may change slightly with other watches. More specifically, another Wear OS 4 watch (once the update eventually rolls out to other watches) may have different buttons you need to press.

Connect your watch to your phone

For starters, you’ll need to make sure your watch is connected to your smartphone. This is a no-brainer since it’s always been this way. But it’s easy to understand that you might think this wouldn’t be needed. As the screenshot could just be taken on the watch with no connected phone and save to the watch’s internal storage. However, this isn’t the case. Screenshots are taken and then sent to a connected phone right away.

Press the digital crown and the recents button at the same time

Once your watch is connected to your phone you’re ready to take screenshots. All you will need to do when you want to take one is press the digital crown and the recents button at the same time. The recents button is more flat and sits just above the digital crown on the watch case. Tap these simultaneously just for a second and you’ll get your screenshot.

Send and share the screenshot on your phone

After you take a screenshot you’ll get a notification on your phone from the watch. A menu will pop up asking you where you want to send the screenshot. You’ll have plenty of options here including attaching the screenshot to an SMS message, or sending it through any number of social apps like Discord, Messenger, Google Meet, and even Gmail. Or you can choose to upload it to Google Photos.

Your chosen send method only needs to be selected once

Though you have the option to select a certain method every time, you don’t have to. For example, I chose to have my screenshots uploaded to Google Photos and opted to have this be the send method every time. From now on, every time I take a screenshot it will send directly to Photos. You will still need to upload the photo from the watch to your chosen app each time. So if you choose “upload to Google Photos” like I did, you will still need to upload it there. But you won’t have to select that app anymore. Alleviating one step of the process from the very first time you upload an image.

It’s still a little more tedious than it needs to be. But this is better than it was on Wear OS 3 and Wear OS 3.5. Here’s hoping Google will change it so screenshots upload automatically when grabbed. And that’s it. See, pretty simple and definitely better than it was before.