If you have multiple displays set up, this function will only grab the primary display; not all of them like you would with the 'Print Screen' key.
Also, this should be pretty obvious but I'll mention it anyway, if you're running GPU-intensive applications (not CPU), calling this function will cause quite some significant lag to your machine and server response until the request is complete.
imagegrabscreen
(PHP 5 >= 5.2.2, PHP 7, PHP 8)
imagegrabscreen — Captures the whole screen
Description
Grabs a screenshot of the whole screen.
Note:
This function is only available on Windows.
Parameters
This function has no parameters.
Return Values
Returns an image object on success, false on failure.
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.0.0 | On success, this function returns a GDImage instance now; previously, a resource was returned. |
Examples
Example #1 imagegrabscreen() example
This example demonstrates how to take a screenshot of the current screen and save it as a png image.
<?php
$im = imagegrabscreen();
imagepng($im, "myscreenshot.png");
imagedestroy($im);
?>See Also
- imagegrabwindow() - Captures a window
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User Contributed Notes 3 notes
Nitrogen ¶
15 years ago
divinity76 at gmail dot com ¶
5 years ago
if you for whatever reason need this in Cygwin, this can be done with the library at https://github.com/divinity76/autoit_php
- cygwin-compatible rough equivalent:
<?php
if(!function_exists("imagegrabscreen")){
function imagegrabscreen()/*:gd-resource*/{
require_once("autoit.class.php");
$au=new AutoIt();
$png_binary=$au->_ScreenCapture_Capture();
return imagecreatefromstring($png_binary);
}
}
(note that unlike the real imagegrabscreen() , this function may throw a RuntimeException if there is a problem taking the picture, or if autoit.class.php cannot be loaded)
andrew at local dot co dot nz ¶
16 years ago
For this to work your Apache service must be set to 'Allow service to interact with desktop' otherwise you will just get a blank image. To fix this right-click My Computer, select Manage/Services and Applications/Services - find the apache service (like Apache2) and right-click, select Properties - choose the Log on tab and check the 'Allow service to interact with desktop' checkbox. Restart Apache.
