Find out how to stop your iPhone or iPad from automatically opening the screenshot and showing the full-screen preview after you take a screenshot.
When you take a screenshot in iOS 18 or older, the file appears temporarily as a small thumbnail at the bottom corner of the screen. If you need to crop, Markup, or share this screenshot, tap the thumbnail to preview it on the full screen and take the necessary action.
iOS 26 has changed this default behavior, and now, when you capture a screenshot, it opens automatically, taking up the entire screen. In addition to allowing you to quickly crop, edit, and share the screenshot, this new behavior also enables you to use visual intelligence to learn more about the objects, places, or text within the screenshot.
However, all things considered, this new change poses a significant hindrance to taking multiple screenshots in quick succession. Additionally, this behavior presents a roadblock if you simply want to save screenshots to the Photos app without taking any extra action, such as cropping, editing, sharing, or using visual intelligence.
So, if you’d like to disable this iOS 26 feature and return to the old screenshot behavior, Apple offers you the choice to do that.
Turn off screenshot preview on iPhone in iOS 26
When you take the first screenshot after updating to iOS 26, a small pop-up appears, asking whether you’d like to change this behavior. If you missed that, follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app on iOS 26.
- Tap General, followed by Screen Capture.
- Turn off Full-Screen Previews to stop screenshots from opening automatically after you take one.
To test, take a screenshot, and it will no longer open in full screen; instead, it will appear in the bottom corner of your iPhone or iPad screen as a small thumbnail for 3 seconds and then disappear automatically to be saved to the Photos app.
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