Google has just made it easier than ever to capture video stills while using its Chrome web browser. The company highlighted the struggle faced by users when attempting to capture video frames — noting that screenshots often produced lower-quality images with the video’s progress bar shown across it. If you’re using Chrome (or another Chromium-based browser, like Microsoft’s own Edge), that’s now a thing of the past. Starting today, users can hit pause at any time during a video, right-click, and select the new “Copy Video Frame” option from the pop-up menu.
We went ahead and tried the feature but noticed it didn’t work as intended. On YouTube, evoking the new option required two right clicks instead of one. The first right-click brought up the native YouTube menu but after a second try, the menu with the new feature was available. When you click the “Copy Video Frame,” Chrome will capture what’s currently being shown and you’ll have the option to paste your image in supported text fields within the browser, like Google Docs. We were also able to paste the image into the Apple Notes app; from there, you can save the actual file.
As of right now, there is no option to save the copied video image directly to your desktop as a file. The feature is also limited when it comes to streaming services, with many of them restricting the ability to capture content. In fact, so far we’ve only gotten it to work on YouTube. So, while this feature may technically be helpful in a pinch, it may need some fine-tuning to be more useful. Chrome’s new “Copy Video Frame” is being rolled out today for Windows, Mac, Linux and ChromeOS.
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