How to quickly edit screenshots on iPhone or iPad with Instant Markup

With Instant Markup on iPhone and iPad, you can annotate or quickly edit screenshots right after taking them. You can do things like add text and vector shapes to your screenshots, doodle anything with your finger or Apple Pencil, zoom in on a part of a screenshot to emphasize it, and much more. Let’s show you how.

How to edit screenshots with Instant Markup

To take and edit a screenshot quickly without needing to open the Photos app, do this:

1) Capture what’s on the screen of your iOS device.

  • iPhone with Face ID: Press the Side button and the Volume Up button simultaneously
  • iPhone with Home button: Press the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously

2) Access your Instant Markup tools by tapping the thumbnail that appears for a few seconds in the lower-left corner of the screen right after taking a screenshot.

Tip: If you took multiple screenshots, tap on their preview bundle in the lower-left corner to open them all in Instant Markup. From there, you can swipe between the individual images to make changes to a particular screenshot.

3) Use Markup’s built-in tools to sketch, create text, crop, zoom in, add a signature, and more.

  • Sketch: You can draw arbitrary shapes directly on the screenshot using your finger or Apple Pencil. Tap a different pen tool to change the line width. Use other shortcuts lined up alongside the screen bottom to do things like erase a portion of your drawing, pick a drawing color, and more.
  • Zoom in: To highlight a specific area of the screenshot, tap the “+” in the lower-right corner, then choose the Magnifier action from the popup menu. To increase the area that you’d like to magnify, drag the blue dot along the edge of the circle. To zoom in on a part of the screenshot, drag the green dot.
  • Add text: To add some text, tap the “+” in the lower-right corner, then choose the Text action from the popup menu. You can choose a color for your text, change its font, size, or alignment, reposition the text box, and more.
  • Add signature: To add your own signature, tap the “+” in the lower-right corner and choose Signature from the popup menu. You can use your finger to sign your name, create a new handwritten signature or drop one of your previously saved signatures onto the screenshot. Drag the corner of the box in or out to resize your signature.
  • Crop: To crop out unwanted parts of the screenshot, just drag the four lines.

Markup includes other annotation and editing tools as well.

For example, there’s a handy lasso tool for selecting multiple objects at once. You also get some useful built-in vector shapes like a circle, square, rectangle, speech bubble, and pointing arrow that can be solid-colored or outlined.

4) Tap Done in the upper-left corner to save or delete your screenshot.

Tip: If you’d like to annotate a screenshot after it’s been saved to Photos, launch the Photos app and open the image you’d like to annotate. Tap Edit, then tap the Markup icon.

Edits you make using Markup in Photos are revertible. For instance, you can use Markup in Photos to add a speech bubble along with some text to a screenshot. The next time you open that screenshot in Markup through the Photos app, you’ll be able to relocate the speech bubble, edit the text, and so forth.

Saving, deleting, and sharing screenshots from Instant Markup

The Markup interface includes options for saving screenshots to the Photos app. You can also delete one or more screenshots taken in a single session and share your screenshots.

Saving or deleting screenshots in Instant Markup

To save or delete one or more annotated screenshots, tap Done in the upper-left corner after making your edits and choose the appropriate option from the popup menu:

  • Save to Photos: All the screenshots in the Instant Markup interface will be saved along with your annotations and other changes to the image library in the Photos app.
  • Save to Files: This will save the screenshot with all the edits in the Apple Files app.
  • Delete Screenshots: Any screenshots in Instant Markup will be discarded and moved to the Recently Deleted album in Photos, to be permanently deleted within 30 to 40 days.

If you accidentally deleted a screenshot, undelete it with just a few taps: Go to the Albums tab within the Photos app, choose the section titled Recently Deleted, select the image you’d like to undelete, and then tap Recover in the lower-right corner.

Sharing screenshots in Instant Markup

To share screenshots from the Instant Markup interface, tap the Share icon and choose where you’d like to share the images.

Your annotated screenshots are shared as flattened JPEG files.

For those wondering, the Markup tools in iOS also make it easy to annotate photos you take with your iPhone or iPad and email attachments and documents stored in PDF format.

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