Daydream continues to be an interesting platform that boasts a decent amount of content for users with the compatible devices and the Daydream View headset, though there is still plenty of room for it to grow and admittedly it needs much more content. Hopefully that will come with time. For those that are enjoying the content that is already there, you may have wondered how you can take a screenshot of the content you’re consuming, whether it’s a video application like Netflix or a game like Need For Speed VR. In either case, screenshots while in VR as if you were using the Daydream View are possible and can be completed in a couple of different ways, both while the phone is in the headset and while the phone is out of the headset.
For starters, if you try to open up any VR apps on your compatible device that are meant for Daydream, if the phone isn’t already in the headset you’ll be met with a screen like you see below, which requires you to put the phone into the Daydream View headset before you can really continue.
To bypass this screen, you will need to enable an option that allows you to skip it. The setting isn’t readily available normally, but it’s a pretty quick and painless process to get it to show up, as all you have to do is enable developer mode. Developer mode works the same here as it does for enabling developer mode in the Android system, you just need to tap on the build version in the settings of the Daydream app, which is all the way at the bottom of the settings screen as it’s the last option.
Once you tap on Build version a few times, Developer options will pop up just before the open source licenses and help sections of the settings menu, and once this is enabled you’ll see it in the app for good. From here getting past the first screen which tells you to place your phone inside the headset is just a couple of taps away. Enter into Developer options and there will be a toggle that you need to enable towards the bottom of this list, labeled “skip VR entry screens,” and after checking the box you can then close the Daydream app out and open whatever VR app you were wanting to take a screenshot in, then proceed to use the press and hold power and volume down button simultaneously like you would for any other screenshots.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to go through this whole entire process it’s still possible to avoid these steps and simply place the phone in your Daydream View headset, then press the power and volume down buttons at the same time to grab a screenshot of whatever screen you’re on. The downside of this for some is that it might be a little harder to actually grab the screenshot as the latch that keeps the visor part of the headset up covers a majority of the volume up and down buttons, at least on the Pixel, which makes it just a little tougher to grab a screenshot as hitting the volume down button is not as easy.
There’s also the issue of having the headset on so you’ll simply have to feel around for the buttons instead of being able to see them. Worth noting is that whichever method you use to take screenshots, there is a bit of a trade-off. If you take a screenshot with the phone in the headset then it’ll probably be easier to navigate through the content and find what it is you want to grab a screenshot of, but hitting the buttons might be a tiny bit more challenging, though not impossible by any means. If you use the other method with the phone out of the headset, then hitting the buttons will be simpler, but navigating the content and finding the screen you want might be more challenging. The good news is that screenshots will generally look the same with either method.
Whatever your reasons for doing so, if you’re wanting to take screenshots in VR on Daydream it’s quite easy to do and is really no different than taking a screenshot on the phone normally, and once you grab the screen you want they’ll be stored in your photos app along with everything else inside the screenshots folder so they’ll be easy to find too.