When the first Android 11 Developer Preview was released earlier this year, there were hints that scrolling screenshots might be included with the update. Unfortunately, a Google employee revealed today that that feature won't make the cut.
Dan Sandler, who works on Android for Google, revealed during a Reddit AMA today that scrolling screenshots won't be included with Android 11. "We're still working on it, but it didn't make the cut for R," Sandler says when asked if the ability to take a scrolling screenshot will be included with Android 11.
As for why scrolling screenshots won't be in Android 11, Sandler explains that Google wanted to enable the feature in a way that would work broadly rather than quickly putting together a feature that only works for a couple of specific apps or devices. So the team will take the extra time to get the feature working right and implement it in a future update.
Here's Sandler's full response to the question about scrolling screenshots:
"We’re still working on it, but It didn’t make the cut for R.
"Rather than cranking out a quick hack that works for one or two hand-picked apps on a particular device, our goal on the platform team is to build this in a way that _any_ app can plug into, whether they’re using a bog-standard RecyclerView or have implemented their own OpenGL-accelerated scrolling engine. We investigated this throughout the R timeline, involving folks from the window manager and System UI teams; you’ll be able to see this scrolling capture framework start to take shape in the AOSP source.
"In the end, as with every Android release (and especially in this unusual year), we had to make hard choices about where to focus our limited resources; while this is a cool feature that we’re still really excited about, we decided not to rush it. Look for it in a future API bump."
It's definitely a bummer that scrolling screenshots won't be included with Android 11. This is a handy feature that lets you easily take a screenshot of a long webpage or block of text and get a single clean image rather than multiple screenshots that you have to stitch together. Some Android OEMs have their own version of this feature, but we are glad to hear that Google is working to get the feature working just right before they bake it into Android proper.
