Capture Pro / Guides

How to screenshot a whole Gmail thread or ChatGPT conversation

Most full page screenshot tools give you one screen of Gmail or ChatGPT and stop. That is not really the tool's fault. It is how these apps are built.

Why a normal full page capture fails here

An ordinary web page scrolls as a whole. Web apps work differently: the page itself stays still, so the menus and sidebar never move, and only a panel inside it scrolls. A tool that scrolls the page finds there is nothing to scroll, and hands you whatever was on screen.

Illustration: the outlined panel becomes one tall image

Capturing the panel instead

1. Open the email thread or conversation.
2. Press Alt Shift F, or choose Full page from the Capture Pro icon.
3. Capture Pro notices the page itself does not scroll, finds the panel that does, and scrolls that instead, cropping each screen to the panel.
4. You get the whole thread or conversation, top to bottom, without the app's menus and sidebar around it. The editor labels it Scrolling panel.
5. Before sharing a conversation, check Redact found. Your own email address is usually on screen, and one click covers it.

Many other web apps are built the same way, such as dashboards and admin panels, and are captured the same way.

Limits worth knowing

• Frames from another website. If the scrolling part belongs to a different website embedded in the page, no extension is allowed to reach into it. You get a message rather than a wrong capture.
• Older messages that load as you scroll. These are followed as they load, up to half as long again as the conversation was when you started.
• Very long conversations. A capture stops after 40 screens, or at the largest image Chrome can create, and tells you.