Taking Screenshots of Palm OS

Posted on February 10th, 2009 by Matt Donilion

This is a step by step pictorial showing you how to use Snap, a free, easy to use, screen shot application for any Palm OS 5 device. Snap is a standalone app that doesn’t require YAHM or DA Launcher, and is the easiest way to take screenshots.

Here’s what you will need:

Snap
Media Card

Let’s get started! First, install the program through whichever method you prefer. Then, open the program by tapping on the Snap icon in your launcher.

Then, you’ll notice the setup screen for Snap. Tap the Enabled button. Then, set the activation key (snaps the screen shot). Snap was originally written for PDAs, not Treo smartphones, so the key names appear in the order as on a PDA.

Agenda = Phone
Contacts = Calendar
To Do = Mail
Memo = Home (applications)
Hard Key 5 = Voice Memo (on a device such as the Tungsten T3)

Do note that if you use the power button as the trigger, it will take the screenshot and then turn off the device’s screen. That could be a bit problematic, so using a hard button is a better idea.

You’ll also notice file prefix, that’s whatever you want your screen shots to be labeled. I simply put screenshot for the sake of the tutorial, but you may type whatever you like in that field. Next, you’ll see the auto disable setting. Auto disable when checked disables Snap after you take a screenshot. In other words, if you want to take multiple screenshots, leave this option unchecked, but you will have to disable it manually through the settings when you’re finished.

After setting your preferred settings, you just switch to a app of your choice and press the selected activation key. For the sake of the tutorial, I’ll refer to it as to the power button. The screen shot is captured between the two beeps you’ll hear after pressing the power button (or whatever key you selected). After capturing the screen, you can then retrieve your shots which are located on your SD card in the \PALM\Programs\Snap\. If you want to be able to view the screenshot on the device, you’ll need to move it to the \DCIM\Palm\ folder using a file manager. If you don’t already have a file management application, FileZ; is a good freeware choice.

When the Snap folder is opened, you can see that your screenshots in .BMP format will be there.

Note: Snap can only store screenshots in BMP (or bitmap) format, which is uncompressed. Each screenshot will be around 300KB, so you may wish to convert them to JPG or PNG to save space. Do not use Microsoft Paint to convert to JPEG! JPEGs saved by Paint are lossy. A more advanced photo editor application such as Adobe Photoshop will be able to store better quality JPEGs. However, Paint stores PNGs that are is smaller in filesize yet still retain the bitmap’s quality.

There you have it, Snap, is a “snap!” Hint: I used Snap to take the screen shots for this tutorial. Have fun snapping away!

Troubleshooting

Snap isn’t working correctly in (insert application name here).

Some applications, such as games, may alter how Snap functions and the screens may not capture correctly. So, you may get a squealed look as described by the author of this software.

Snap is taking multiple screenshots.