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Troubleshooting

Capture problems

Fix InnoShot captures that do nothing or come out blank, from restricted pages and missing gestures to protected video, iframes and file URLs.

Updated

Most capture problems come from the page rather than from InnoShot. Chrome protects certain pages, and some content cannot be read by any extension. This article helps you recognize each case and shows what to do about it.

Nothing happens when I click

The page is restricted

Chrome does not let extensions run on some pages:

  • chrome:// pages, such as Chrome's settings and extensions pages
  • the Chrome Web Store
  • pages that belong to other extensions
  • view-source: pages
  • the New Tab page
  • Chrome's built-in PDF viewer
  • file:// pages, until you allow file access (see below)

On these pages, area, element and full-page capture are not available. Visible-area capture may still work on some of them. InnoShot shows a message explaining why a page cannot be captured. Open the content on a regular web page and try again.

The capture did not start from your click or shortcut

Chrome lets InnoShot capture a tab only after you ask: by clicking the toolbar popup, pressing a keyboard shortcut, or choosing InnoShot from the right-click menu. That permission is for the current tab, and it lasts while you stay on that site.

  • Start captures from the page itself. You cannot open the editor first and capture a page from there later.
  • During a delayed capture, stay on the same site. If you go to a different site or close the tab, the permission ends and the capture cannot finish.

The shortcut does nothing

Check that the page is not restricted and that the shortcut is actually assigned. See Shortcuts not working for the full checklist.

Blank or black areas

Some content can come out blank or black even though you can see it on screen:

  • Protected video. Streaming services that use copy protection often prevent their video frames from being captured, so you may see a black rectangle where the video was.
  • Graphics-accelerated content. Some content drawn by the graphics hardware, such as certain video players, 3D views or canvas-based apps, may not appear in captures on some computers.

This depends on how the page and the browser handle that content, and InnoShot cannot get around it. If a page is still loading, wait until it has finished and capture again.

Embedded content from other sites

Pages often embed content from another site in a frame, such as a video, a map, a payment form or a comment widget. These cross-origin iframes do appear in your captures, because capture works on the pixels you see. However, element capture and scrollable-container capture cannot reach inside them.

To capture embedded content:

  • Use selected area capture and drag around it.
  • If the embedded content has its own address, open it in its own tab and capture it there.

Local files (file://)

Chrome blocks extensions from local files until you allow it:

  1. Open chrome://extensions in the address bar.
  2. Find InnoShot and click Details.
  3. Turn on Allow access to file URLs.
  4. Reload the file and capture again.

Still stuck

  1. Reload the page and try again.
  2. Try the same capture on a different, ordinary website to see whether the problem is specific to one page.
  3. If it is still not working, contact us and describe the kind of page, the capture mode you used and what happened. Please do not send screenshots that contain private information.

Still stuck? See troubleshooting or contact us.