The way web pages are saved as .jpg images or converted into PDF files has changed in iOS 13 on the iPhone. See how to save web pages as PDFs or JPEGs and how to convert one to the other.
You might sometimes wish you could save a screenshot of a web page, perhaps if you want to remember how it looks at a particular time, you want to save the current information on it, you are developing a website, and so on. There are many reasons for wanting to save a web page and it can be saved as a JPEG image or a PDF file.
Screenshot web pages on the iPhone
Taking screenshots and saving what is on the screen as a JPEG image is easy on the iPhone and all you need to do is to quickly press the sleep/wake button on the right and the volume up button. It is slightly different if you have an old iPhone with a home button and you press sleep/wake and the home button together.
Open Safari, go to the web page you want to screenshot, scroll up or down to show the part you want to save, then press sleep/wake + volume up.
The image is saved to the Photos library as a .png file and you can open the Photos app to view it, delete it, share it and so on. It is all very straightforward and little has changed over the years.
The way that web pages are saved as PDF files has changed in the latest version of iOS and the old method does not work. You used to be able to go to a web page in Safari and press the share/actions button at the bottom of the screen. On the menu was a Create PDF option (you may need to edit the actions to add it to the menu). It saved the whole page as a PDF file.
That menu option has gone in iOS 13 and you cannot save web pages as PDF files that way. Here is how to save a web page as a PDF file.
(See more iPhone tips and articles)
Save web page as PDF on the iPhone
- Open Safari and go to a web page
- Press the Share/Actions button
- Press Markup (slide the menu up if you don’t see it
- Press Done
- Press Save File To
- Save the file to a folder on iCloud
You don’t have to use the markup tools and they can be ignored, but going through the markup editor enables the web page to be saved as a PDF. It is the full web page and not just the part that is on the screen.
It includes everything, such as the header, sidebar, footer, and possibly adverts too. It is messy and distracting to see all this clutter.
There is a way to remove all the unnecessary clutter from web pages saved as PDF files and to just save the content as a PDF. This method produces a much cleaner PDF that contains only the web page content. It cannot be used on website home pages, pages with sliders and other items. It is specifically designed to save web articles as PDFs.
Save clean web page as PDF
- Open Safari and go to a web page
- Press aA in the top left corner
- Press Show Reader View
- Press the Share/Actions button
- Press Markup (slide the menu up if you don’t see it
- Press Done
- Press Save File To
- Save the file to a folder on iCloud
First we saw how to save a screenshot of a web page, then we saw how to use Markup to save a full web page as a PDF.
How do you save a full web page as a JPEG screenshot? You can’t. There is no way to save a full web page as a screenshot. However, there is a workaround.
You could use either of the two methods above to save a PDF of the web page, then use steps 7, 8 and 9 below. However, I want to show yet another method of saving a full web page as a PDF.
Screenshot full web pages on the iPhone
- Open Safari and go to a web page
- Press Sleep/Wake and Volume Up on the iPhone to take a screenshot
- Press the thumbnail image in the bottom left corner of the screen
- Select the Full Page tab in the markup editor
- Press Save PDF to Files
- Save the file to a folder on iCloud
- Open the PDF file in Preview on the Apple Mac
- Select File > Export
- Set the file format to JPEG and save it
Preview on the Mac will export any PDF as an image file and you can choose the format, such as JPEG, PNG and others. You can therefore use any of the methods above to create the PDF, such as pressing Share/Actions and selecting Markup or pressing Sleep/Wake and Volume Up, then tapping the thumbnail to go to the markup editor.
Select File > Export when viewing a PDF in Preview on the Apple Mac to save it as a JPEG image.
There is no way to convert PDF to JPEG or PNG on the iPhone, although third party apps may be able to do this, so if you want to save a full web page as an image, you must use a Mac to convert it. You could do this on a Windows PC with a third party tool that saves PDFs to JPEGs, but Preview in macOS is the easiest way to do it.
The width of the PDF that is created is set by the width of the iPhone screen. A narrow PDF is created when sleep/wake + volume up is pressed and the thumbnail tapped to open the markup editor in portrait mode.
However, if you hold the phone in landscape, Safari uses the full width to display the page and so the PDF that is created is more like what you would see on a desktop computer with a big screen. Don’t forget you can then turn the PDF into a .jpg screenshot on your Mac with Preview.
