Chrome 121 Beta allows users to save frames from YouTube videos directly

It wasn’t all that long ago that Google introduced one of my favorite new features for grabbing screenshots from YouTube videos. In early September, the new “Copy video frame” feature arrived and ever since, I’ve used it countless times to snag a new thumbnail for a post from one of our videos on YouTube. After all, those videos are all color corrected and look great, so grabbing a still for a featured image is super handy.

Doing this same task prior to this feature’s arrival was annoying. You had to get as many available pixels on the screen as possible, hope the video rendered fully, wait for the controls to disappear, and snag the screenshot at just the right time. With the ability to copy a video frame, however, all that work was put to rest. You simply right click and then right click on the video again to bring up the sub-menu, copy the frame (it will pull the full resolution you are set to regardless of your window size), and paste it somewhere to use it. Simple.

An even easier method is now here

In November, a new version of this method arose that was marked “coming soon” and was simply labeled ‘Save video frame as…’ We were excited to see it and were hopeful for its arrival, and that day is finally here. In ChromeOS 121 (in the Beta Channel for now), you can now do the same right-click, right-click shortcut and instead of only having the option to copy the frame, you can now save it directly.

It’s a feature I’m already getting used to having in my back pocket, and one that I know many of you will use a lot now that you know it exists. As a reminder, you need to right click on the video, and then right-click once again somewhere else on the video frame to get this sub-menu to appear. After that, choose the ‘Save video frame as…’ feature and you’ll be good to go!