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Comment by auxym | Hacker News Reader

I hang out on reddit subs for things like mechanical engineering, CAD, FEA, electronics and PCB design. It's not uncommon for people to be asking for help with their software (solidworks, fusion, abaqus, kicad, altium, etc) and posting a picture of their screen taking with a phone, apparently unaware of the "screenshot" feature of their OS. Often these are ME/EE students.

It's somewhat mind boggling.

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Admittedly, as someone who takes screen shots at least weekly, I have taken a photo of my screen simply because it's faster and easier than the alternative.

A. On my computer, browse to the site I'm already using on my phone. Find the thread I was reading and the comment I wish to respond to, if applicable. Post the screnshot.

Or B, take a screenshot, upload it somewhere that I can access on my phone. Download it to my phone. Then share it on my phone through whatever means my OS makes available.

I'm a software developer and I'm one of these people. It's because I don't use the screenshot tool often enough to know the shortcut key or how to open it. I can't remember. It's faster to use the phone as the UI to access the camera is 10x more intuitive.

If I care enough to post something nicer I'll google how to do it.

CMD+shift+5 on Mac to open up the screenshot tool

Snip app on windows which you can pull up by hitting the windows key and typing the name

Both allow for easy cropping of a screen, and snip has a built in marker for drawing on the screenshot

Oh thanks. Like I said, I won't remember this. Also I switch between 3 OS's so technically I need the shortcut key for gnome as well.

Gnome I can’t help with.

I was in the phone screenshot camp with you until I realized these had the cropping feature built in. Not needing to clear my screen of information I don’t want included in the screenshot was enough of a boost to incentivize me to remember these

But no worries if you don’t, it was unsolicited advice and I won’t be offended if it’s ignored

Usually I use Greenshot on Mac but maybe I can map it to the default keystrokes

CMD+Shift+4 takes you directly to the snipping screenshot tool as well.

Yeah I remember 20 years ago not knowing how to screenshot, but to be fair it wasn't exactly obvious that the Print Screen button meant Screenshot, and I don't remember anything in Windows telling me what the Print Screen button did. But now the Snipping Tool is moderately obvious I think.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me depending on the specifics. If you already have reddit on your phone but not on the computer, then it is much more convenient just to take a pic and post it.

Isn't it because they're using reddit on their phone and there's no easy way to transfer images from a computer to a phone?

That's because the screenshot functionality in Windows is unusable. Don't you still have to do some strange dance with MSPaint to get a file out of it?

Emailing yourself things is also never going to go away because of how well it works.

Win-Shift-S - you're welcome.

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