Screenshots that still make sense in a year

01

Why most screenshots fail

Open your camera roll and look at a screenshot you took six months ago in the middle of something.

There is a good chance it shows a few gray bubbles with no name at the top, no date anywhere, and no way to tell what was said before or after. You know what it means. Nobody else does, and in a year, neither will you.

That is the whole problem, and every fix below exists to solve it.

02

What a usable screenshot has in it

Four things, visible in the picture:

1. 1
   Who it is with. The contact name or number at the top of the screen. Scroll up and include the header.
2. 2
   When. Most apps only show a date at the top of a day's messages. Scroll up until that date is on screen, even if it means two screenshots.
3. 3
   Enough either side. The messages before and after. A single bubble out of context is the easiest thing in the world to misread, and the easiest to accuse somebody of cherry-picking.
4. 4
   The whole conversation, across several shots, overlapping slightly so they obviously join up.

Three overlapping screenshots beat one tight crop, every time.

03

The thirty-second habits

1. —
   Don't crop. Ever. The parts you remove are the parts that establish context, and a crop invites the question of what was cut.
2. —
   Take the full screen, including the status bar at the top. It carries the time.
3. —
   Capture immediately. Messages get deleted, accounts get closed, group chats get wiped.
4. —
   Rename the file the same day. "2026-03-14 text from Marcus re deposit.png" is findable in a year. "IMG_4471.png" is not.
5. —
   Back it up off the phone the same week.

04

Keep the original, not a photograph of the screen

A screenshot taken by the phone itself carries the date it was made inside the file. A photograph of a laptop screen taken with another phone carries almost nothing, and looks like what it is.

If the content is on a computer, use the computer's own screenshot function. If it is a website, better still: save or print the page to PDF, which keeps the URL and the date in the output. Find the date a photo or video was taken

And keep the original file rather than re-sharing it around. Every time an image is sent through a messaging app it is compressed and re-saved, and the information inside it is thinned out.

05

Screenshots of things that disappear

Some things only exist until somebody takes them down, and this is where the habit matters most.

A listing, a public post, a review, a profile, an online portal showing a balance or a status, a tracking page, an online form you submitted. If it matters, capture it now, because "it used to say" is not a record.

For those, get the address and the date into the capture — the browser bar with the URL in it, and the clock. A page saved as PDF does this for you.

06

What not to do

1. —
   Don't edit the image. No highlighting on the original, no arrows, no boxes. If you want to point at something, do it in your written record — "item 7, the third message down" — and keep the image untouched.
2. —
   Don't screenshot a screenshot. Go back to the source.
3. —
   Don't rely on the app keeping it. Disappearing messages, closed accounts, deactivated profiles and changed numbers all take the evidence with them.
4. —
   Don't assume the date on the file is the date of the message. The file date is when you took the screenshot. The message date is inside the picture, which is why it has to be visible.

07

Questions people ask

Where this fits

The full method is in How to document a dispute, and What makes a record believable covers the standard all of this is built to meet.

Related: Quoting someone versus describing them

How we write these

About this guide

This guide is written and reviewed by the BuildMyEvidence editorial team. It's about keeping a record, never about who's right or what anyone is owed. It doesn't name laws or deadlines, because those change from state to state. When something here changes, the reviewed date at the top changes with it.