Being a tech journalist, a lot of my time goes into writing how-to guides, and naturally, I need to capture screenshots on my iPhone every day. It might be different for you; capturing screenshots may be a once in a blue moon action.
Regardless, if you’ve ever taken a screenshot on your iPhone, you would have certainly come across a screenshot preview thumbnail. A temporary thumbnail that appears in the lower-left corner of your iPhone screen right after a screenshot is captured.
From there, you have two options: You can tap on it which will open the markup. Here you can edit the screenshot, crop it, add paint, etc. Once you’re done editing it, tap Done and the screenshot will be saved in your Photos. Or you can simply leave the screenshot preview thumbnail as it is. The preview will automatically disappear, saving the image in Photos.
How to share screenshots in iPhone?
Whichever option you may choose, in the end, you will want to share the screenshot with someone. You can do that either by tapping on the share button in the markup window or selecting the screenshot in the Photos app, both of which will prompt the iOS share sheet.
You can also get the Share Sheet if you long press on the screenshot preview thumbnail. I think there should be another way to share screenshots while they are in thumbnail form.
Drag and Drop Share
I think enabling iOS users to drag the thumbnail and drop it where they want to share the screenshot would be much easier rather than following a bunch of steps on the Share Sheet.
If you were to share a screenshot on iMessage, imagine swiping left on the bottom to get back to the app and simply dragging the screenshot preview thumbnail on top of the chat to share the file.
The same quick-share screenshot preview thumbnail is already available to Mac users, so it’s not like I am shooting arrows in the dark. On macOS, the thumbnail (i.e original screenshot) can immediately be shared on WhatsApp, Slack and other platforms that support drag and drop files.
To be honest, it comes off as weird to me that the functionality is not available on iOS. In what little time is the screenshot preview available, you can easily switch between apps. iOS even allows you to drag the thumbnail, but for some reason drop and share is not available.
It may look like nit-picking, but I think all these little things are what makes an operating system truly intuitive.
