Skip to content

Capturing

Scrollable containers

Capture the full contents of a chat, panel or table that scrolls inside its own box, which a normal full page capture shows only at its visible size.

Updated

Some content scrolls inside its own box rather than with the page: a chat conversation, a code panel, a sidebar, a table with a fixed height or the body of a dialog. A full page capture scrolls the page itself, so whatever is hidden inside such a box stays hidden. Scrollable container capture scrolls the box instead and stitches its whole contents into one image.

What counts as a scrollable container

A scrollable container is any element with its own scrollbar: you can scroll it while the rest of the page stays still. Common examples:

  • Message lists in chat and email apps
  • Code blocks and log viewers
  • Side panels and navigation trees
  • Tables and lists inside a box with a fixed height
  • The content area of a dialog or settings panel

Some web apps put all of their content inside one such container, so the page itself never scrolls. If a full page capture of an app comes back only one screen tall, this is a likely reason.

Capture a scrollable container

  1. Scroll the page so the container you want is in view.
  2. Click the InnoShot icon and choose the option to capture a scrollable region. This command has no shortcut by default, but you can assign one at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.
  3. InnoShot detects the elements on the page that scroll on their own. Point at the one you want and click to pick it.
  4. Wait while InnoShot scrolls the container from top to bottom, capturing as it goes.
  5. Scroll positions are restored and the editor opens with the result.

How it is stitched

InnoShot scrolls the container one visible section at a time, captures each section and joins them into one tall image of the container's contents. Chrome allows an extension at most two screen captures per second, so this takes roughly half a second per section: a long chat history or log can take several seconds.

Once it is in the editor, the result works like any other capture. You can crop it, annotate it, put it on a background or export it as a paginated PDF.

Limits

  • Virtualized lists. Long feeds, chat histories and data grids often draw only the rows near the visible part and remove the rest. As the container scrolls, the app redraws rows, which can make the result render differently from what you expect. Check the image in the editor, and capture in smaller parts if needed.
  • Iframes. A container inside a cross-origin iframe, such as an embedded widget from another site, cannot be picked. Its pixels still appear in visible area and selected area captures, so capture what is on screen with one of those.
  • Restricted pages. Scrollable container capture is not available on pages Chrome reserves for itself, such as chrome:// pages and the Chrome Web Store.

Still stuck? See troubleshooting or contact us.