How To Take A Screenshot On Your Android Wear

Whether you want to share a message on your screen or simply show off your new cool watch face, a time may come when you will want to take a screenshot on your Android Wear – and you should be able to do so.

Unfortunately, for quite some time – that is until the launch of the latest Android Lollipop update -taking a screenshot on your Android Wear device was not at all too easy and required a knowledge of ADB commands and installation of SDK tools. However, with this very update, the process has become much easier – and you should make use of that.

So here’s how you go about taking that screenshot:

• First,  note that for this to work – your watch needs to have the latest Android Lollipop update. You will also need to connect your watch to your phone or tablet and make sure that phone or tablet is running the latest version of Android Wear app. Once these two conditions are met, you can go ahead with the below instructions.
• You will need to enable Developer options on the phone or tablet connected to your watch. How you do that may vary depending on the version of Android installed on your phone, but the basics should be the same.
• Go to Settings, scroll down and open About.
• Head over to Build Number at the very bottom and tap on it 7 times (yes, seven). This will enable Developer Options and you should see it show up in your Settings, next to About.
• Now the setup is complete and you can move on to the actual screenshot taking.
• Go to the Android Wear app on your phone or tablet
• Tap on the menu button (the three dots in the corner in the top-right corner)
• Tap on Take Wearable Screenshot

And that’s it – done! In just a few seconds you will get a notification that your screenshot is ready. Click on it to access the screenshot – and from here you can choose what you would like to do next – share, save, etc.

Note: the screenshot is not saved automatically in your Photos, so if you just clear the notification, it will be deleted.

So as you see, the latest updates have made the process clear and easy. But if you still do not have the latest Lollipop updates or are wondering what the process looked like before, here it is.

On older Android versions, you had to go through a much longer and more complicated ordeal. What you had to start off with was head over to the Android Developer Site in order to download and install the needed SDK tools.

(SDK – is a Software Development Kit, containing a set of tools that will allow you to create certain applications).

Once you had your SDK tools installed, you would need to enable Developer Mode on your watch. Here you would follow the same steps as we did before:  Settings>About>Build Number (tap it 7 times). Similarly, Developer Options would then show up in the Settings.

After connecting the watch to your computer with a USB cable, things would get even more interesting as you would need to enter a few commands.

Here’s what you typed in to take a screenshot:

adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/screenshot.png

And here’s how you transfered it to your computer:

adb pull /sdcard/screenshot.png

(Mac users – had to add / before a command)

As you see, the process used to be quite intimidating, and some users chose to shy away from taking the screenshot rather than go through all the steps.

That’s why, as soon as the latest Lollipop update is available on your Android Wear device, go ahead and install it  – and then you can take all the screenshots you want!

Still looking for the right Android Wear device?  Check out our selection here.