How to take full screen video screenshots on Youtube on Windows 10
Taking screenshots of a YouTube video is fairly simple so long as you do not pause it, or you do not switch to the full screen view. If you do switch over to the full screen view, you will find that you cannot take a screenshot without the media controls getting in the way. Here’s a simple, way to take full screen video screenshots on Youtube in any browser on Windows 10.
Full screen video screenshots on Youtube
First, open the browser that you’d like to take the full screen video screenshots in. Make sure the Bookmarks bar is visible. On Chrome, you can show the bookmarks bar with the Ctrl+Shift+B keyboard shortcut. In Firefox, right-click the title bar and select the Bookmarks toolbar option from the menu.
Next, select the following code snippet, and drag and drop it onto the bookmarks bar. Give it a name that tells you what it is. This is basically a bookmarklet that will hide the media controls on a YouTube video.
javascript:(function(){var goaway=".ytp-chrome-top,.ytp-chrome-bottom{display:none;}";if("\v"=="v"){document.createStyleSheet().cssText=goaway}else{var tag=document.createElement("style");tag.type="text/css";document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(tag);tag[(typeof document.body.style.WebkitAppearance=="string")?"innerText":"innerHTML"]=goaway}})();
Visit YouTube and play the video. You can pause it at the point where you want to take the screenshot, or do that later. It’s up to you. Once the video is playing, click the bookmarklet you just created and all the media controls will disappear.
Now, double-click the video player to switch to full screen view, and out of it. Use the Space bar to play/pause the video.
All you have to do now is pick your screenshot tool. You can tap the Win+PrintScreen keyboard shortcut and a full screen screenshot will be saved to a Screenshots folder in Pictures. You can use the Snip & Sketch tool to take a time delayed screenshot, or you can tap the PrintScreen key and copy the contents of your screen to the clipboard, and then paste it into Paint.
The above three are native Windows 10 options. If you prefer a different tool, one that you can easily activate while YouTube is in full screen, feel free to use that instead.
To get the media controls back, refresh the page, or close it and re-open the tab.
In theory, this should work on macOS as well. The bookmarklet shouldn’t have any trouble running though it may or may not work in Safari. That isn’t too big a problem since you can always use Chrome for Mac for the screenshot, even if you prefer Safari for everything else. Mac has an excellent screenshot tool built-in.
