How to take a screenshot and share it programmatically

Question

I am making an application in Android in which I have to take screenshot of one of my activities and mail it as attachment.

I want to take screenshot of the current

Answer 1

1. Create the share button

I wanted mine in the action bar so I created a share_menu.xml file:

This adds a button in the action bar with my share_icon and the text.

2. Add the sharing menu to your activity (or fragment)

I did this inside a fragment so I added the code below to my fragment file. If you are inside an activity then you override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) instead.

@Override
public void onCreateOptionsMenu(
        Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.share_menu, menu);
}

if you are doing this with a fragment then in onCreate() you have to add:

setHasOptionsMenu(true);

3. Set up button action/callback/onclick

This is what is going to kick off the sharing.

@Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        if (item.getItemId() == R.id.share_item){
            Bitmap bm = screenShot(this.getView());
            File file = saveBitmap(bm, "mantis_image.png");
            Log.i("chase", "filepath: "+file.getAbsolutePath());
            Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(new File(file.getAbsolutePath()));
            Intent shareIntent = new Intent();
            shareIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Check out my app.");
            shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri);
            shareIntent.setType("image/*");
            shareIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION);
            startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareIntent, "share via"));
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }

Notice this calls two magic methods:

screenShot():

private Bitmap screenShot(View view) {
    Bitmap bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(view.getWidth(),view.getHeight(), Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
    Canvas canvas = new Canvas(bitmap);
    view.draw(canvas);
    return bitmap;
}

private static File saveBitmap(Bitmap bm, String fileName){
    final String path = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath() + "/Screenshots";
    File dir = new File(path);
    if(!dir.exists())
        dir.mkdirs();
    File file = new File(dir, fileName);
    try {
        FileOutputStream fOut = new FileOutputStream(file);
        bm.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.PNG, 90, fOut);
        fOut.flush();
        fOut.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return file;
}

Important

To your AndroidManifest.xml, you have to add:

or the screenshot won't be saved, and gmail will think you are trying to attach an empty file.

Also, a lot of SO answers say to use "*/*" for shareIntent.setType() but this creates an issue with facebook sharing, so it's best to leave it as "image/*".