Chrome now has a ‘Copy Video Frame’ option for vastly improved video screenshots

If you’ve ever struggled to snag the perfect frame from a video playing in your browser, Google has just rolled out a feature for Chrome that will make this a far simpler task moving forward: Copy Video Frame. This new feature allows users to right-click on a paused video and instantly copy the frame in a higher quality than what you may get in a screenshot. Currently, this is available on Chrome 116, and it’s rolling out across all platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS.

How ‘Copy Video Frame’ works

Actually using the feature is a breeze. When you pause a video and right-click (twice in some apps like YouTube, where upon one right-click, the first menu will appear, and you’ll need to right click on the video again), you’ll now see an option to ‘Copy Video Frame’ in the same sub-menu where you find the Picture in picture feature.

Selecting the new ‘Copy Video Frame’ option captures the exact frame you have paused in the video and allows you to paste it in supported apps within Chrome. This won’t save the image to your device, and you need to note that Mac and ChromeOS users can’t directly paste the captured frame onto the desktop. Those users will need to paste it into a web app that supports image pasting within Chrome like Canva or Corel Vector to see the results.

Why ‘Copy Video Frame’ is better than a screenshot

Before this feature, capturing a video frame manually often led to lower-quality images with the video’s progress bar in the image and things like the YouTube channel’s watermark still present. With the new ‘Copy Video Frame’ tool, you don’t have to worry with screen overlays and you’ll only get the underlying image.

Additionally, you’ll get the image pulled at the actual resolution of the video, and that’s a HUGE win. For instance, if you have a YouTube video playing at 1080p but it is in its native state (not full-screen or theater), the video on the screen is likely not actually playing at 1080p. Taking a standard screenshot is going to reduce the pixel density of your frame to whatever is actually displayed on your screen.

In contrast, the new ‘Copy Video Frame’ feature snags the still image at the video’s set resolution. That means you can leave the YouTube player in the normal viewing state (with comments and sidebar showing) and if you’ve set the playback to 4K, you can grab a still frame using this new method and it will pull the 4K frame for you without having to blow up the video on a 4K display. It’s a pretty sweet touch!

I think many users will find this feature incredibly useful for getting high-quality stills from videos for use in things like blog posts, presentations, social media, or simply sharing an image with a friend. Additionally, educators and students can utilize it for academic purposes, making it easier to cite visual information from videos as well. It’s a small, yet highly beneficial addition that will make Chrome users’ lives just a little bit easier, and sometimes those are the best feature add-ons.