Samsung devices used to have a dedicated Home button that was used for taking screenshots. Lately though, this has changed so this step by step tutorial will walk you through how to capture a screenshot on the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+.
Samsung has a history of doing things differently. While it has definitely benefited them in the long run as they have been able to distinguish themselves from the fierce competition within the Android market. However, this has also led to an increased learning curve when coming to or from a Samsung device.
Examples of this include Samsung not including support for Fastboot (which requires you to use a PC program called Odin) and a number of their software features.
Most smartphones and tablets have you pressing and holding the Power and Volume Down buttons at the same time to capture a screenshot. Older Samsung devices used a dedicated hardware button and that meant Samsung designed their devices to capture screenshots differently. These older devices used a button combination of the Power and Home button to take a screenshot but newer Samsung devices no longer have a dedicated hardware button. So if you’re upgrading from an older Samsung device, or coming from a different mobile platform entirely, let me show you how to capture a screenshot on the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+.
How to Capture a Galaxy S9 Screenshot
- Press and hold the following two buttons down at the same time. . .
- Power button and Volume Down button
- . . .and continue holding those buttons down until you get a preview of your screenshot.
Explanation
It took Samsung almost a decade to implement a screenshot shortcut method that matches the other Android devices on the market but I’m glad they have finally done it. I also like that they have gotten rid of the dedicated hardware buttons as well as I am a fan of the shrinking bezel trend. In some cases, Samsung has replaced the features and functions that used to use the Home button with the dedicated Bixby button. I’ll be covering guides that do that in the future but that isn’t the case here
So we’re just doing the same screenshot shortcut button combination that we have done on other devices. When you’re ready to take a Galaxy S9 screenshot simply press and hold the Power button and the Volume Down buttons at the same time. If you do this properly then the screen will not turn off (like it normally does if you just press the Power button). You’ll want to continue holding these two buttons down until you see the animation on screen and receive a preview of the screenshot image.
There are a number of things you can do with this Galaxy S9 screenshot image but most take a screenshot to either save the information to reference later, or to share it with someone. So you can do either of that right here since there is a row of icons at the bottom of the screenshot image preview. One of these is interesting and it’s a feature that we don’t see on all Android devices. It’s called the Scrolling Screenshot and it lets you merge multiple screenshot pages together with a few easy taps.
This is great if you want to capture a screenshot of a long article, website, recipe, or anything that requires you to scroll through the page to see all the content. Once you take the initial screenshot that you want it to start with, just tap the Scroll Capture button and you’ll see the page scroll down as it captures that screenshot and adds it to your existing one. You can continue this process by pressing the Scroll Capture button again and again to continue adding onto the full image.
