Android has had native screenshot functionality since its very early days. For the most part, this functionality has not seen any major changes, with the idea still remaining fairly simple. Press the volume down and power button at the same time, and take a screenshot on any app on any page (except on apps that explicitly restrict screenshots, such as banking apps and some media apps). Google was testing native scrolling screenshots with Android 11, but the feature did not reach the stable builds. Now, it appears that Google is working on scrolling screenshot support for Chrome on Android.

According to a report from Chrome Story, there is a new experimental flag for Google Chrome for Android that should enable scrolling screenshots within the browser in the future.

Chrome Share Long Screenshots: Enables UI to edit and share long screenshots on Android

While the flag does not lead to a live feature that can be tested out just yet, it does describe what we can expect out of it. Essentially, you can capture, edit, and share long screenshots. This will be specifically present within the Chrome browser, unlike the previously proposed changes by Google for Android as a platform. Users will be able to capture entire webpages viewed within Chrome, once the feature goes live that is.

A lot of OEMs have already implemented scrolling screenshots in their custom UX skins on top of Android. The feature goes by different names, but the idea is to capture a screenshot of the entire vertically scrollable area instead of just the area currently visible on the display. Engineers in the Android team have mentioned that they are still working on implementing the feature natively across the platform, and it will come sometime in the future. The feature within Chrome should thus be a stop-gap solution for the browser, serving needs while the platform feature takes shape and gets refined. Chrome already offers a screenshot editor, so the upcoming feature wouldn't be out of place.