Android Take Screenshot of Surface View Shows Black Screen

Question

I am attempting to Take a Screenshot of my Game through code and Share it through an Intent. I able to do of those things, however the screenshot always appears black. Here

Answer 1

Update 2020 view.setDrawingCacheEnabled(true) is deprecated in API 28

If you are using normal View then you can create a canvas with the specified bitmap to draw into. Then ask the view to draw over that canvas and return bitmap filled by Canvas

 /**
     * Copy View to Canvas and return bitMap
     */
    fun getBitmapFromView(view: View): Bitmap? {
        var bitmap =
            Bitmap.createBitmap(view.width, view.height, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888)
        val canvas = Canvas(bitmap)
        view.draw(canvas)
        return bitmap
    }

Or you can fill the canvas with a default color before drawing it with the view:

    /**
     * Copy View to Canvas and return bitMap and fill it with default color
     */
    fun getBitmapFromView(view: View, defaultColor: Int): Bitmap? {
        var bitmap =
            Bitmap.createBitmap(view.width, view.height, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888)
        var canvas = Canvas(bitmap)
        canvas.drawColor(defaultColor)
        view.draw(canvas)
        return bitmap
    }

The above approach will not work for the surface view they will drawn as a hole in the screenshot.

For surface view since Android 24, you need to use Pixel Copy.

    /**
     * Pixel copy to copy SurfaceView/VideoView into BitMap
     */
     fun usePixelCopy(videoView: SurfaceView,  callback: (Bitmap?) -> Unit) {
        val bitmap: Bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(
            videoView.width,
            videoView.height,
            Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888
        );
        try {
        // Create a handler thread to offload the processing of the image.
        val handlerThread = HandlerThread("PixelCopier");
        handlerThread.start();
        PixelCopy.request(
            videoView, bitmap,
            PixelCopy.OnPixelCopyFinishedListener { copyResult ->
                if (copyResult == PixelCopy.SUCCESS) {
                    callback(bitmap)
                }
                handlerThread.quitSafely();
            },
            Handler(handlerThread.looper)
        )
        } catch (e: IllegalArgumentException) {
            callback(null)
            // PixelCopy may throw IllegalArgumentException, make sure to handle it
            e.printStackTrace()
        }
    }

This approach can take a screenshot of any subclass of Surface Vie eg VideoView

Screenshot.usePixelCopy(videoView) { bitmap: Bitmap? ->
                processBitMap(bitmap)
            }