Capturing full screenshot with status bar in iOS programmatically

Question

I am using this code to capture a screenshot and to save it to the photo album.

-(void)TakeScreenshotAndSaveToPhotoAlbum
{
   UIWindow *window = [UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow;

   if ([[UIScreen mainScreen] respondsToSelector:@selector(scale)])
       UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(window.bounds.size, NO, [UIScreen mainScreen].scale);
   else
       UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(window.bounds.size);

   [self.view.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
   UIImage *image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
   UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

   UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(image, nil, nil, nil);
}

But the problem is whenever the screenshot is saved, I see the status bar of iPhone is not captured. Instead a white space appears at the bottom. Like the following image:

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The status bar is actually in its own UIWindow, in your code you are only rendering the view of your viewcontroller which does not include this.

The "official" screenshot method was here but now seems to have been removed by Apple, probably due to it being obsolete.

Under iOS 7 there is now a new method on UIScreen for getting a view holding the contents of the entire screen:

- (UIView *)snapshotViewAfterScreenUpdates:(BOOL)afterUpdates

This will give you a view which you can then manipulate on screen for various visual effects.

If you want to draw the view hierarchy into a context, you need to iterate through the windows of the application ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] windows]) and call this method on each one:

- (BOOL)drawViewHierarchyInRect:(CGRect)rect afterScreenUpdates:(BOOL)afterUpdates

You may be able to combine the two above approaches and take the snapshot view, then use the above method on the snapshot to draw it.

Answer 2

The suggested "official" screenshot method doesn't capture status bar (it is not in the windows list of the application). As tested on iOS 5.

I believe, this is for security reasons, but there is no mention of it in the docs.

I suggest two options:

• draw a stub status bar image from resources of your app (optionally update time indicator);
• capture only your view, without status bar, or trim image afterwards (image size will differ from standard device resolution); status bar frame is known from corresponding property of application object.