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Like other commenters point out, automatic OCR on Apple platforms is a godsend, and it's such a great use of our modern AI capabilities that it should be a standard feature in every document viewer on every platform.
Another thing I wish was more common is metadata in screenshots, especially on phones. Eg if I take a screenshot of a picture in Instagram, I wish a URL of the picture was embedded (eg instagram.com/p/ABCD1234/). If I take a screenshot in the browser, include the URL that's being viewed (+ path to the DOM element in the viewport). If I take a screenshot in a maps app, include the bounding coordinates. If I take a screenshot in a PDF viewer, include a SHA1 hash of the document being viewed + offset in the document so that if I send the screenshot to someone else with the same document, it can seamlessly link to it. Etc etc.
There are probably privacy concerns to solve here, but no idea is new in computer science and I'm pretty sure some grad student somewhere has already explored the topic in depth (it just never made it to mainstream computing platforms).
It feels like screenshots have become the de facto common denominator in our mobile computing era, since platforms have abstracted files away from us. Lots of people who have only ever used phones as their main computing devices are confused when it comes to files, but everyone seems to understand screenshots.
Also, necessary shout out to Screenshot Conf! https://screenshot.arquipelago.org
OCR is a godsend, 100% agree. Not a fan of the metadata idea personally, 'screenshotting' is done by the operating system, and exposing ways to allow apps to know that they were 'in' the screenshot plus expose some metadata of their choosing (like your examples of GPS coordinates for a maps app, url for browser) sounds like a privacy nightmare, and like something that will make a very reliable core feature much harder to use.
There are companies like Evernote/Zight/CloudApp that at one point tried some things like this, but they never really caught - I think because it's pretty easy to add annotations yourself or some note of your own - and a screenshot not "trying to do everything" is part of what makes them useful & ubiquitous.
By manwe150 2025-11-113:35 But apps (most notably Snapchat comes to mind) have been doing exactly that analysis though. Theoretically they could then [offer to] edit the photo immediately afterwards to add context, since they had access to the photo roll or files https://android.stackexchange.com/a/119767
By aexer0e 2025-11-1120:05 > 'screenshotting' is done by the operating system, and exposing ways to allow apps to know that they were 'in' the screenshot plus expose some metadata of their choosing sounds like a privacy nightmare
The apps don't have to know a screenshot was taken for this feature to exist; they could write into a passive "in case a screenshot is taken, use this as metadata" object data field that the OS uses when the user takes a screenshot
By m463 2025-11-1121:07 I agree
deep linking allows apps to know/intercept known URLs and do "things". I don't know if the screenshot mechanism would involve this.
I do know that some things cannot be screenshotted. On macs this is any HDCP image on the screen (shows up as a blank rectangle). On android I believe some apps cannot be captured in a screenshot. Don't know about ios.
By paulmooreparks 2025-11-112:481 reply OP here. You raised a point that I should have mentioned in the article: screenshots of web pages that don't include the URL. I'm perfectly fine with screenshots of browser windows, since the context is almost always relevant. The system I work on right now puts a lot of useful context into the URL, but it's almost never included in the initial screenshot, so I have to ask for that. Of course, I generally ask for it as text so that I don't have to try to type the whole thing without making a mistake.
By heddycrow 2025-11-114:44 I was content to write the original off as "to each his own", but this one I feel you on.
Maybe the problem is sharing without caring and/or without being aware.
Case in point, folks capture large blocks of text as you mentioned and paste it into slack which converts certain characters unless included in a code block. This can be much worse than sharing a screenshot.
Please know the best way to share what you are sharing when you share. I've had to come to expect this request will not be honored.
I also might be guilty of not honoring sharing with caring myself. For example, I didn't read this entire thread before posting; others may have made this exact point already.
By pests 2025-11-112:41 > It feels like screenshots have become the de facto common denominator in our mobile computing era,
Google/Apple have taken notice. Both have recently redone their full-screen post-screenshot UI to include AI insights / automatic product searches / direct chat with Gemini/LLM / etc.
Its true everyone uses screenshots to save things they are interested in or want to look up / search more of / save for reason and this UI is the perfect place to insert themselves.
By NooneAtAll3 2025-11-114:181 reply > Eg if I take a screenshot of a picture in Instagram, I wish a URL of the picture was embedded
bloody hell of all privacy concerns
By gyomu 2025-11-117:32 Why? Either it's public content, and it can be traced back manually anyways (screenshots from social media posts typically include the username), or it's private content and knowing the URL slug doesn't change anything (the fact that you're sharing a screenshot of private content is the privacy breach, not the fact that some UUID is embedded).
Fun side-fact: The original MacPaint, while in development, had an "ocr" copy feature, albeit much simpler of course.
It didn't make it in the release version out of fear that people would use MacPaint as a Word Processor.
By ggirelli 2025-11-118:01 Why spend electricity and time to read the text in a screenshot, and then more time making sure there are no mistakes. When the sender could have just copied the original text?
By pjc50 2025-11-1110:43 > metadata in screenshots
Interesting idea, but I think this understates how often screenshots are "slightly adversarial". I'm taking a screenshot because the app or webpage has deliberately made it hard to select text for some reason. Or the UI is just annoying about selection (e.g. trying to select the text from a link anchor without being considered as having clicked on it, which is fiddly on Android).
Then there's the question of fully adversarial screenshots. I can definitely see why people want "I want to send this to someone and discourage them from seamlessly resharing it", but at the same time: it's my screen. Not generally a problem on desktops unless you're dealing with video content.
By PeterStuer 2025-11-1112:05 Honestly, why are you developing software if you are "confused when it comes to files"?
Your OCR isn't going to help you for the missing off-screenshot clipped parts.
By 1gn15 2025-11-115:35
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effectAI is whatever hasn't been done yet. — Larry Tesler, 1970By MathMonkeyMan 2025-11-113:591 reply Yes but they're quite good at it. Reliable OCR is font dependent, whereas I think a lot of models just kind of figure it out regardless.
By paulmooreparks 2025-11-114:562 reply One reason I don't quite trust AI for OCR is that it will, on occasion, hallucinate the output.
By ssl-3 2025-11-115:35 All OCR is untrustworthy. But sometimes, OCR is useful. (And I've heard it said that all LLM output is a hallucination; the good outputs are just hallucinations that fit.)
A few months ago a warehouse manager sent us a list of serial numbers and the model numbers of some gear they were using -- with both fields being alphanumeric.
This list was hand-written on notebook paper, in pencil. It was photographed with a digital camera under bad lighting, and that photograph was then emailed.
The writing was barely legible. It was hard to parse. It was awful. It made my boss's brain hurt trying to work with it, and then he gave it to me and it made my brain hurt too.
If I had to read this person's writing every day I would have gotten used to it eventually, but in all likelihood I'll never read something this person has written ever again. I didn't want to train myself for that and I didn't have enough of a sampleset to train with, anyway.
And if it were part of a high-school assignment it would have been sent back with a note at the top that said "Unreadable -- try again."
But it wasn't a high school student, and I wasn't their teacher. They were a paying customer and this list was worth real money to us.
I shoved it into ChatGPT and it produced output that was neatly formatted into a table just as I specified with my minimal instruction ("Read this. Make a table.").
The quality was sufficient to allow us to fairly quickly compare the original scribbles to the OCR output, make some manual corrections that we humans knew how to do (like "6" was sometimes transposed with "G"), and get a result that worked for what we needed to accomplish without additional pain.
0/10. I'm glad it worked and I hope I never have to do that again, but will repeat if I must.
There was a good talk some years ago at some of the CCC events where some guy found out that scanners sometimes change numbers on forms.
By kiliankoe 2025-11-119:31 It's David Kriesel's infamous talk about the even more infamous Xerox bug.
Talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6558_-_de_-_saal_g_-_201412282...
Bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Character_substitution_b...
By pylotlight 2025-11-115:302 reply But AI can OCR
By simianparrot 2025-11-116:462 reply They do so by running the image through an OCR tool call
By dpoloncsak 2025-11-1120:281 reply They can, sure...that's really just LLMs though.
ML models to recognize handwriting have existed way before LLMs could call tools, though
Identifying digits is like the "Hello World!" of ML
By simianparrot 2025-11-127:07 An OCR tool is ML. AI is generally used to mean LLM’s. You’re repeating what I already wrote
By stavros 2025-11-118:09 No they don't, they natively "see" images.
That's a thing I always marvel about - how LLMs are so versatile and do so much stuff so good that was out of reach just some years ago
By docmars 2025-11-1118:57 Especially when you consider how expensive "good" OCR software is
By ponector 2025-11-119:35 On apple platforms it definitely is an AI. Apple intelligence!
By 9rx 2025-11-117:26 AI says that OCR is AI.
By radarsat1 2025-11-113:46 God of the gaps
By crazygringo 2025-11-112:0719 reply I disagree. I use screenshots all the time, because it:
- Preserves the full 80 character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability
- Guarantees monospace, so tabular data doesn't get all misaligned
- Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end
- Preserves syntax highlighting, very helpful
Obviously if somebody needs a whole file or whole log, then send the whole thing as an attachment. But very often I'll still include a screenshot of the relevant part. With line numbers, it's not difficult to jump to the right part of the attached file.
Screenshots are incredibly useful for keeping code and terminal output looking like code and terminal output, and not getting completely mangled in an e-mail or chat message being read on a mobile device or in a narrow column.
Key things required for posting to the chat: people reading can read it, people reading can copy and paste it, and people searching can actually find it. It doesn't need to exactly match what you might see in a text editor. Anybody wanting to look at the actual text in context won't be doing it in the chat, but will rather be opening the file of interest in the appropriate tool, and examining it that way; anybody stuck reading the text only in the chat is probably on their phone or something and will be best served by being able to easily see all of it.
For reading purposes, the question of screen width is best left to the reader. They will have the window set to their preferred width, possibly limited by screen size. If the text has to wrap, so be it. It's better that than having to try to squint at your 3713x211 screen grab on an iPhone (portrait orientation). Also bear in mind that even the most basic of font and colour choices (large/small font, dark/light mode) can cause accessibility issues for some readers.
For copying and pasting purposes, images suck. Yes, macOS can do it, sort of, and I expect Windows 11 can do it too, probably to about the same extent. But it's not as easy as having the text right there in copyable form.
For searching purposes, ditto - only worse, because at least when you copy and paste and it comes out wrong, you'll notice. When you search: you just won't find the thing. You'll never know.
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:263 reply > people reading can read it
Which is why screenshots help, for the reasons I gave
> people reading can copy and paste it
Why? If there's something like a user ID or error code that the person needs as text, I'll paste that separately. Stuff I include in a screenshot is for understanding, not copying and pasting.
> and people searching can actually find it.
Which is what the message text around the screenshot is for. Which actually includes the relevant keywords, not random tabular data or lines of code which just add noise to search.
> Anybody wanting to look at the actual text in context won't be doing it in the chat, but will rather be opening the file of interest in the appropriate tool, and examining it that way;
Except when they aren't/can't. The whole point of screenshots is for when they can't access something easily that way, which happens for a million different reasons.
> anybody stuck reading the text only in the chat is probably on their phone or something and will be best served by being able to easily see all of it.
Which is what images make far easier to read without being messed up.
> For reading purposes, the question of screen width is best left to the reader. They will have the window set to their preferred width, possibly limited by screen size. If the text has to wrap, so be it.
No it's not. Wrapping destroys indentation and alignment. It's not "so be it", it goes from readable to literally unreadable. I can't change the width of my phone or a lot of viewing areas. I can always scroll an image horizontally though.
> It's better that than having to try to squint at your 3713x211 screen grab on an iPhone (portrait orientation).
Which is why zooming and panning exist. I don't know where you're getting something silly like 3713 pixels though. But if that's the width of some massive table whose layout needs to be preserved, then so be it.
By opello 2025-11-118:00 > Which is why zooming and panning exist.
Which loses fidelity in your raster format screenshot world. Alternatively, when text is presented as text, a user can scale it independently for readability. Or as another commenter pointed out, use a screen reader.
You focus on a kind of permissions or network limitation technical access, between the computers in the system, but don't seem to appreciate another very real type of technical access between the user and the leaf computer in the system.
By RealityVoid 2025-11-115:273 reply I feel your argument unnecessarily obtuse.
You keep trying to frame that photo is superior, when, sure... The image is superior in your argument only when it's accompanied with text. So is it the image that is important then? No to mention, that is contingent. If that is your point, then, sure, I don't mind, add a screenshot next to the text but, please, give the text.
By petepete 2025-11-117:29 The main reason the argument doesn't stand up is that some people use screen readers.
Unless you know the person/people you're sending something to can read screenshots, it's only right to at least accompany them with the text.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1115:131 reply There's nothing obtuse about it.
You're creating a strawman. Nobody is aruging that you send only a screenshot, devoid of context or explanation or any other text. That's absurd.
The point is, if you need to illustrate code or output then that part gets sent as a screenshot, to preserve readability. It provides extra details and context.
If you want the code or data in text format to dig in, then go get it from the files yourself, because you probably need a broader swath anyways. My message isn't a data repository. I'm including the screenshot so you can understand the issue easily, without having to open anything else.
I'm genuinely mystified by this entire conversation. I'm baffled by this idea of needing to take some example I'm sending in a screenshot and... copy and paste it into a text editor to edit it? Huh? What the heck?
By RealityVoid 2025-11-1118:371 reply Let me give you some examples that I saw in my professional life and make me angry enough that I am genuinely miffed you can't see this.
Here, check out this hash. Snip! Screenshot! Here, try this code snippet. Screenshot! Here, go to this absurdly long URI. Screenshot! Try configuring your XML this way. Screenshot! (Bonus point for underspecified location)
By crazygringo 2025-11-1121:46 You're right, those sound idiotic. If someone sent me a hash I needed to look up in a screenshot, if they had access to the selectable text, or code to run, they need to have their head looked at.
But that's not what the blog post was about. It specifically showed a section of code that was having an issue. It's not meant to be copied and pasted, like all of your examples. It's meant to be an easily readable snippet that preserves formatting.
The only problem with the example in the blog post is that the sender didn't also say which file and line number the issue was in. But the screenshot itself is often very helpful, because many times the question can be answered without having to load up anything else.
I'm really assuming that people aren't sharing URL's by screenshot. I've been working in this field a long time and haven't encountered someone dumb enough to do that yet, knock on wood...
By 63stack 2025-11-117:35 It's completely obtuse. "I'll include the important bits in a separate text as well, because I already know everything that the other person is going to find important."
By tom_ 2025-11-1114:47 Others have made the basically the responses I would make myself, except for 3713 pixels being most of the width of a 4K display, and about the right number of pixels for the interesting part of the error list window in Visual Studio 2022.
> - Preserves the full 80-character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability
Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer.
> - Guarantees monospace, so tabular data doesn't get all misaligned
When was the last time a computer shipped without a monospace font? This points at the rare occasion where there's a problem with the setup, but you could also argue that maybe there's a system with a broken image decompressor.
> Screenshots are incredibly useful for keeping code and terminal output looking like code and terminal output, and not getting completely mangled in an e-mail or chat message being read on a mobile device or in a narrow column.
Are you complaining about GMail's rendering maybe? Its awful[^0], but that's more of a GMail problem that could be solved if they wanted.
[^0]: Column width unbounded even on 4k monitors. Weird and inconsistent font sizes across different fonts (monospace is smaller). Reads poorly on phones too.
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:311 reply > Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer.
For plaintext sure. Not for code or tabular data. It destroys indentation and destroys column alignment and interleaves parts of rows. It's a horrid mess.
> When was the last time a computer shipped without a monospace font?
When was the last time I have to read something in a font I can't control that is forced to be proportional? Oh, constantly. Literally all the time.
> Are you complaining about GMail's rendering maybe?
Yes, and messaging clients, and chat clients, and everything unless it has actual dedicated code blocks that render with a horizontal scroll bar. Which are the exception as opposed to the rule.
> > Readability is on the eyes of the final user, they are free to use whatever narrow column width they prefer.
> For plaintext sure. Not for code or tabular data. It destroys indentation and destroys column alignment and interleaves parts of rows. It's a horrid mess.
I don't think I have seen unaligned html tables, nor unaligned spreadsheets made from CSV/TSV/etc. Images are worse than PDF, so I guess it's 0-stars in the 5-star data tier.
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:451 reply I'm not really sure what you're talking about. PDF...?
I'm talking about tables output in the terminal, in ASCII by SQL or something. By Python's tabulate. Output from a script. Or yes, even HTML tables or spreadsheet cells that get pasted into the message client as plaintext and lose their table formatting.
This isn't about a standard for publicly distributed open datasets, what are you on about? This is about quick messages in a chat or e-mail.
> even HTML tables or spreadsheet cells that get pasted into the message client as plaintext and lose their table formatting.
Sounds like a message client problem to me. You are switching to a worse data exchange format just to get around a very basic implementation of the paste API.
Pictures are a worse exchange format than the data even a PDF or CSV, which is why I mentioned the RDF data exchange tier list, not because I'm on hard drugs.
Is it convenient to send Images on whatever message client you use? Sure, but as a receiver of the data in a picture you can do nothing but type the data yourself (yeah, you can ask for the source too, but on async comm channels that may not arrive in the same day).
By Hackbraten 2025-11-117:17 > Sounds like a message client problem to me.
More often than not, you have no control over your client thanks to proprietary protocols and interop-hostile apps. So yes, it's a message client problem, but that fact doesn't change anything.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1113:591 reply > Sounds like a message client problem to me.
Yes, of course it is. That's the entire point.
It's a very needed workaround for most message clients, since most message clients don't support code blocks with horizontal scroll.
By unixplumber 2025-11-1116:391 reply But at least text can be copy-pasted by the receiving user into a real text editor of their choice if there's an actual need to preserve tabular/indented/wide text.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1118:031 reply That's an extra step that can be extremely difficult to do on mobile. I'm trying to make my messages clear immediately, not make the recipient jump through hoops. That's what good, clear communication is about.
By dietr1ch 2025-11-1418:29 Maybe don't work from a tiny screen if its too small for you to do basic tasks.
By eviks 2025-11-115:45 All of the points are mostly personal and thus should never be forced on anyone else via a screenshot (as a general rule, though depends on the content)
- no line wrapping destroys readability more since you can't toggle it in a screenshot. Imagine that url on the screenshot taking 3 lines instead of 1 and pushing useful text off screen. Also, forcing 80 on a user of a wider monitor is barbaric.
- And if there is no tabular data (and autoformatted code doesn't do tabular code) you've just lost nice proportional text for nothing
- Syntax highlighting as is commonly used (and as is shown in the blog screenshot) is useless, and is anyway unlikely to match reader's convention
> being read on a mobile device or in a narrow column.
So it can't even be read properly, you have to scroll the screenshot left and right... instead of just reading
By muppetman 2025-11-112:40 100% this. I fully disagree with the post - screenshots show context/colour/formatting etc that often doesn't even translate properly if you DO try to paste it into some IM or other "text swapping" application.
Sure, if you want someone to reproduce the text of course you'd send them actual text. But to show a problem, a picture is, as they say, worth 1000 words.
Most of the time if someone is sending me code as text (which is by far preferable to a screenshot) I'm copying it out and pasting it into my own editor.
That way I get a width appropriate for my screen (which may be different from yours), text that's still aligned correctly, and uses the font of my choosing (which may differ from yours), and still has syntax highlighting (using the sizes/colors/styles that I'm accustomed to).
Sending the whole file (or a link to it) works well too but screenshots are absolutely likely to be some level of annoying for anyone who isn't you no matter how helpful you think you're being.
Forcing someone else to view code the way you like seeing it isn't always going to be completely obnoxious for them (although you might be surprised by what some people find acceptable) but it does make it difficult/impossible to view it the way I like seeing it (in addition to losing the ability to search/edit)
By unixplumber 2025-11-1116:47 > still has syntax highlighting (using the sizes/colors/styles that I'm accustomed to)
Where I work I find it's usually the youngins using a ridiculous light on dark color scheme that post screenshots of code. Are we still stuck in the '80s? And are they pining for a time they never experienced themselves? Computer hardware has been capable of displaying the more civilized and easier-on-the-eyes dark on light color schemes since then.
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:571 reply This isn't about sending 300 lines of code in a screenshot or something.
This is about, "hey, look at these 6 lines which is where I think the problem might be". It's not for pasting in a separate editor, why would you do that? It's about providing quick context even if you're on your phone.
If you want to go inspect that spot in the file once you're back at your computer then go do that. The screenshot is to save you time because often you can answer just based on it.
By CGamesPlay 2025-11-114:591 reply On my phone is a great example of why I don't want your screenshot of a desktop-wide code editor.
By crazygringo 2025-11-115:062 reply On my phone is exactly when I do want it, because that's where text linewraps and jumbles and becomes totally unreadable.
You understand you can just screenshot the code part that is 80 characters wide? You don't have to screenshot the entire full-screen window?
But even if someone does include extra width, it takes me about a tenth of a second to pinch-zoom. Which is way quicker than trying to decipher line-wrapped spaghetti.
By bigstrat2003 2025-11-115:181 reply > But even if someone does include extra width, it takes me about a tenth of a second to pinch-zoom. Which is way quicker than trying to decipher line-wrapped spaghetti.
Strong disagree there. It's far easier to read the line wrapped code than to pinch to zoom. I think you have your answer: you have different preferences than others do, and no amount of explaining is going to make their "I like cats" make sense to your "I like dogs" sensibilities.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1115:33 So you're telling me this is easier to read:
This doesn't seem like a question of different preferences to me. This seems objectively worse. It's not even close.+----------------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------+ | CustomerID | First Name | Last Name | Email | State | Balance | +----------------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------+ | 000123 | Alice | Ramirez | alice.ramirez@acme.com | NY | 245.50 | | 000124 | Brian | Chen | bchen@northdata.io | CA | 1289.00 | +----------------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------------+
By CGamesPlay 2025-11-115:411 reply > You understand you can just screenshot the code part that is 80 characters wide? You don't have to screenshot the entire full-screen window?
Why are you telling me, the recipient of the crappy text screenshot, how to do it better?
Line-wrapping is also agitating, I'll give you that. Or worse yet, if the sender doesn't know how to use monospaced fonts in whatever app. I prefer a scrolling text box, which is basically a "pre-pinch-to-zoom'ed" screenshot. But with copy and paste and select. Which is even more useful on the phone, because of its limited symbols, so I can pull the relevant part, modify it, and reply.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1114:01 > I prefer a scrolling text box
So do I. But most clients and message mediums don't have support for that. Many don't even have support for monospace at all. Hence, screenshots to get around those limitations.
I think slack and other mail/chat clients rescale the image and apply aggressive compression on it. Sometimes they even crop the image or make it so that you need to scroll left and right. Also your syntax highlighting might be annoying to others and might make legibility worse for the receiver, and as other people pointed out most chat/mail clients support monospace code blocks. Plus I agree with all the things that the blog post author pointed out.
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:361 reply > or make it so that you need to scroll left and right
That's the point.
If have an ASCII table that is 150 character columns wide, I'm sending you a screenshot so that you can scroll left and right, rather than have everything end up in a jumble of interleaved overflowing lines that turn into unreadable spaghetti.
This is a feature, not a bug. Not everyone is opening the message on a full-width monitor.
By unixplumber 2025-11-1116:511 reply You can do the same with text. If your messaging client is lame and forces wrapping, copy and paste the text to a real text editor with left/right scroll and your font and color scheme and other preferences of choice.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1118:05 When I send a message I want the recipient to be able to understand it immediately.
I don't want to make them have to jump through hoops to reformat the text in a different application. That's absurd.
By skydhash 2025-11-112:35 My only use of code screenshot is to emulate the "take a look at my screen workflow". It's only meant for the other person to take a quick glance at. Anything further than that is transmitted as a code block or text file.
Yeah. OP has an egocentric bias - it’s not the norm in the world of work sharing that you can faithfully reproduce the live/contextual environment of the sender given the raw string.
(OP’s blog purports to be pertinent to freelance software development).
By SpicyLemonZest 2025-11-112:522 reply What about it? There simply isn't any information format that's both perfectly accessible and reproduces what you're seeing with perfect fidelity. In the happy path you can make the important parts match, but almost by definition, when someone's reporting an issue it's because what they "should" see and what they are seeing don't align.
By rhdunn 2025-11-117:12 There are many accessibility issues with using a screenshot of text instead of text directly:
- displaying a white background image of text when I'm using dark mode;
- using a small font to a user with a visual imparement or on a high DPI display;
- using a colour scheme with low contrast, or colours that are indistinguishable for people with a form of colour blindness;
- using a font that is difficult to read for someone with dislexia;
- etc.
And others have mentioned not being able to search for the text within the image, or select/highlight the text (useful for copying a function name, link, or term in the text, or for keeping track of where you are when reading).
Well, that's not the scenario relevant to the article and not a scenario I encounter much these days. I'm not a designer or a front end dev anymore so I rarely encounter a situation where "perfect fidelity" is relevant to me.
I'm biased, but I can't help but feel like chances are, if the screenshot is text, the content of the text is important, not the visual aspects.
99% of the time I get a screenshot these days, it's people sending me screenshots of text logs or code, and almost always cropped in a way that eliminates any context anyway. Give me plain text or give me death.
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:331 reply > the content of the text is important, not the visual aspects.
Columns actually aligning in columns? Indentation being preserved? Lines not getting interrupted with overflowing previous lines?
When I send a screenshot, it's precisely because the visual aspects do matter. (Obviously, when they don't, then I just send the text.)
By jahsome 2025-11-115:15 It sounds like we agree.
In some cases visuals are important, and in other cases, they're not. Hence why I said "chances are" and declared my bias rather than using absolutist language. However, somewhat ironically, you chopped off that part of my reply. I find it odd you chose to respond the way you did, but I digress.
I also carefully indicated my every day interactions with screenshots do not align with those requirements.
Of course there are situations where visual aspects are critical. I'm not disputing that. I'm stating my _preferences_ and my _opinion_ that situation is exceptional.
By hamasho 2025-11-112:52 I genuinely thought this was a satire until I read `Preserves syntax highlighting, very helpful`.
By pwdisswordfishy 2025-11-118:44 > Preserves the full 80 character width without line-wrapping, which destroys readability
How line wrapping interacts with readability is for the reader software to worry about, not the control-freak author. Line length higher than the device width can handle can be even worse for readability than lines wrapped in the wrong places. It's one of the reasons I loathe PDFs.
> Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end
If the reader wants to have their code in hairline-width Courier, that's their right. It's not for the control-freak with awful taste in fonts to decide.
> Preserves syntax highlighting, very helpful
Forces a particular style of syntax highlighting upon the reader without giving them an easy recourse to change it. No thanks.
> Guarantees monospace, so tabular data doesn't get all misaligned
The closest thing to a decent argument. Except pretty much any text input that accepts embedded images will usually also provide a monospace formatting option, so there is no need to screenshot text here either.
By jolmg 2025-11-115:18 It also allows drawing on top. I find it convenient to screenshot / take picture of some code / error log / terminal output then circle some bit, draw some arrows, or do other types of drawings to draw attention to things.
Emphasizing bits on code-formatted text is not as straightforward and would typically be ambiguous (was this punctuation meant for emphasis or was it part of the original text?).
Pictures are also quick to make and grasp, which is a plus when having to quickly diagnose something with others.
The main complaint in the article about having to type into a search bar instead of copying and pasting doesn't make sense. It's like a word or two at most which you'd have to search. It might even be faster to type than to copy and paste (moving cursor around, etc.).
The error log complaint would also be valid had it been text instead of a screenshot. That was a problem of not sharing enough context, not the format of the message.
By nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2025-11-112:205 reply ```
Is widely supported to add code. E.g. in Slack, Confluence...
Both examples you gave have pretty rough or nonexistent syntax highlighting support.
Who cares? If I really really really need that (I probably won't), I can open up vim, type `:set filetype=whatever`, and paste it in.
By machomaster 2025-11-114:341 reply Many people care. Hence, the screenshots.
By nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2025-11-118:09 If it is that essential do both.
By johnisgood 2025-11-1110:01 Uh oh, even Discord has syntax highlighting support with "```".
By crazygringo 2025-11-114:512 reply It's not widely supported. It's not in e-mail or SMS or Gmail or Docs or Word or a hundred other pieces of software where I communicate.
Yes, I use that wherever it exists. It's great, and you're lucky when it's there. I wish it was everywhere. But as long as it's not, for everything else, there's screenshots.
By msl 2025-11-118:20 SMS does not support images either, and email supports HTML. I'm not all that familiar with Word, but I believe it supports some formatting options too.
By crazygringo 2025-11-1118:06 The discussion isn't about monospace. It's about horizontal scroll rather than wrapping lines.
And no, no SMS client I've ever seen uses a monospaced font.
By phito 2025-11-116:44 It's so bad in teams and they put a rather small character limit on it....
Slack seems to always wrap code blocks. It makes python particularly shit to read.
In my experience copying from some programs preserves long lines. Copying from other programs breaks them at the wrap point. Once the text is cut into lines, pasting can't fix it. I'm not at my computer now so I can't give factual examples. I guess that copying from the output of cat file on a terminal is one of those unfortunate cases.
By unixplumber 2025-11-1121:36 > I guess that copying from the output of cat file on a terminal is one of those unfortunate cases.
It depends on the terminal. Some will actually preserve the line breaks vs soft wraps. Those terminals will reflow the text when you resize the window.
But if you already have the file you might as well run something like `xclip <file` to copy its contents directly to the clipboard.
By nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2025-11-118:101 reply If it is that much code attach a file or github link to gist or PR.
By nvllsvm 2025-11-122:05 That's too much friction - especially since managed users cannot even create Gists in GitHub Enterprise Cloud (ugh). https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/man...
As for attaching a file, I'm usually screenshotting small amounts of code - usually of the ephemeral variety.
By smallerize 2025-11-112:39 Even Google chat can do it.
By thomasfromcdnjs 2025-11-112:53 I feel like I've seen good solutions to both problems before, aren't there vscode extensions that let you just select the code and create a sharable link with all the view type options to appear everyone?
By kelnos 2025-11-113:24 I do not care about any of those criteria you mention. I want something I can copy and paste myself. Send me text. Just the text.
By johannes1234321 2025-11-112:13 Except it doesn't use my preferred font, not my don't size, not my colors and I can't copy parts of it as easily and then the stupid chat app scales the image for some reason ot another.
By nacozarina 2025-11-119:58 Many greatly appreciate receiving an accurate image instead of garbled text.
By bluedino 2025-11-112:09 > Preserves a good coding font, so it doesn't come out as some hairline-width Courier on the other end
Let me introduce you to Putty users who never change the default font...
By Affric 2025-11-112:39 See, imo this is why having a good embedding for code is so important. The best of both worlds is available.
The ability to highlight/copy/etc text on Macs/iOS these days is such a killer feature. I use it almost every day, both for copying/translating text in screenshots or taking photos of text to then copy it into my notes later (eg school notice boards or event posters etc).
Windows built-in snipping tool (shortcut Win + Shift + S) also has a text actions button to extract text.
By vismit2000 2025-11-116:23 Or Powertoys does that even better: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...
By jiri 2025-11-117:52 I am using this tool all the time and I did not know this! Thanks!
I have to say, the ability to quickly copy and paste between macbook and iphone is such a great flow
By tylerflick 2025-11-112:40 Totally agree. It’s one of those features that feels like magic. So handy for those digital purchase codes you get with blu-rays.
Yup - I recall when this feature was released, maybe a dozen years ago, with KDEConnect. Real QoL improvement. Glad to hear some other OS's are catching up.
By Aaron2222 2025-11-116:24 Apple's had Universal Clipboard since 2016 (so 9 years) with macOS Sierra and iOS 10.
By ca_tech 2025-11-1119:23 It gave me a "living in the future" feeling the day someone sent me a picture of a phone number through imessage. Barely thinking, I pressed on the phone number in the image and I was prompted to call it. It was like technology and primitive intuition teamed up to create that moment.
By cosmic_cheese 2025-11-113:14 Part of what makes it so good is that it's everywhere. Preview, QuickLook, QuickTime Player (yes, videos get OCR'd too!), any app that uses the system frameworks for displaying media.
This includes Safari, where not only do images (inline or otherwise) have selectable text, but the built in translator leverages that text and uses it to translate images, too! This is super useful for translating Japanese webpages in particular, which tend to have tons of text baked into images.
By internetter 2025-11-112:261 reply I use Shottr, I take a screenshot of a screenshot and hit “O” immediately after. Saves me from first saving the file to open it in the native viewer
By alyyousuf7 2025-11-112:48 I have Shottr keyboard shortcut (cmd+opt+control+o) setup to allow me to OCR from whatever is on the screen and copy the text to clipboard. So whether someone shares code or error log as screenshot on slack, it’s 3 steps: 1. cmd+opt+control+o 2. select the area to OCR 3. cmd+v in vscode or google
By WorldPeas 2025-11-112:06 this. makes me wish more image viewers would ocr->png special field->have location-attached selectable text like a pdf
By ivewonyoung 2025-11-112:201 reply OneNote had this for a long time.
