With the release of Android 5.0.1 on the Motorola 360 smart watch this month, you can now easily take a screenshot of what ever is on the watches display. It’s a little strange how the process works, but it works nonetheless. The only complaint is that there is no option to save the image directly to your phones’ storage. The current work around to get the image on your phone is to share it to Gmail, email it to yourself, then save the attachment. You can also save it to Google Drive, and get it that way. Hard? No, but I like simple. So using Tasker and the AutoShare plugin, I’ve put together a project that will grab your screenshot and save it to the Downloads directory on your phone. With a little work, you’ll have a one tap solution to save and share the screenshot to and from your phone.
First, lets discuss a few hurdles that I encountered in putting this together:
- On my Verizon Galaxy S4 running 4.4.2, not rooted, I could not see the screenshot file in the Gallery app. It was there, and I could see it in the file explorer, but the phone won’t show it until it scans for new media. A reboot of the phone, and the image appears in Gallery. Not wanting to reboot everytime, I installed SD Scanner from the Play Store. This app allows you to initialize a scan, and therefore allowing you to see the image in the Gallery. It also includes an intent for Tasker which I’ll discuss later. You may or may not need to do this.
- The task will prompt you for which app to use to open the screenshot image. Using the Gallery or Photos app will display the image, but leaves you with no Share option. I found specifying the Astro Image Viewer gives you the Share options so you can immediately send the image to any app listed i.e. Google+, Hangouts, etc.
- The AutoShare plugin at first would not grab the screen.png screenshot file. After contacting the developer of the plugin, he corrected the code so it now works. As of this writing, that fix is only included in the beta version of the AutoShare plugin v2.0.19b.
Here’s what you’ll need to get things working:
- Tasker
- AutoShare Plugin for Tasker beta version 2.0.19b. (Install the plugin, join the beta community, and request beta access)
- Astro File Manager. (Optional. Only if you want to share the image immediately when it’s displayed.)
- SD Scanner. (Only needed if you need to force a rescan for media.)
- Moto360 Screenshot Tasker Project
If you have any problems running this task, you may need to change the path that points to Download directory. It’s referenced in lines 1, 4, 6, 7, & 9.
Note: The task will overwrite the screen.png if it already exists, so if you’re taking multiple screenshots make sure you rename each before creating a new one.
Before we start, you have to enable Developer Options on your phone in order for the screenshot option to appear in the Android Wear app. Locate the About section on your phone, this location is different depending on each phone, and click on the Build Number 7 times. Hit the Back button, and you should now see the Developer Options item. Tap it, and turn it on. You don’t need to change any settings in here. Now launch the Android Wear app, tap the menu button, and you should see three additional items to choose from.
- Report Wearable Bug
- Take Wearable Screenshot
- View Wearable Bug Reports
Note: If you already had Developer Options enabled prior to the 5.0.1 update, you may not see these 3 items. Simply toggling Developer Options off and then back on should resolve the issue.
If it isn’t already, install Tasker and the beta version of AutoShare. If you want to be able to immediately share your screenshot, install Astro File Manager as well.
Hold off on installing SD Scanner for now as depending on your phone you may not need it to view the new image in the Gallery app.
Import the Moto360 Screenshot Project into Tasker. You should see the new project tab at the bottom of the Tasker screen named 360 Screenshot. The Save Screenshot task, has the Send Intent command, line 8, for the SD Scanner intent that will automatically launch, and run the scanner. For now, disable that line. If you don’t see the image in the Galllery after running the task, then you will need to install SD Scanner, and enable the Send Intent command.
Let’s take a screenshot…
Launch the Android Wear app, tap the Menu button, and select Take Wearable Screenshot. Make sure your watch is awake, otherwise you’ll end up with a black image. 🙂
Pull down the notification panel, tap Wearable Screenshot Finished, and select AutoShare Command. If you tap the Always button, it will not prompt you on subsequent screenshots.
When the task tries to open the image, it will ask which program to use. You can select any image viewer you like, but as I mentioned previously some apps like Gallery do not offer the Share option when opening the image. If you installed Astro it also comes with an image viewer that will allow you to Share the image when it opens. You should also tap the Always button here as well.
That’s it. The screenshot should open automatically, and is saved as screen.png in the Download directory on your phone.
If you choose the Always button in the 2 steps above, the next time you take a screenshot you’ll only have to tap the Wearable Screenshot Finished in the notification panel, and you”ll be done.