Editor Window screenshot

Question

I want to capture a screenshot from a custom EditorWindow that I'm using as a LevelEditor for a game I'm working on, but i'm not sure on how to do it.

What I want is to capture the EditorWindow, NOT the game view or the scene view.

Can you help me? Thanks!

Edit: I want to take screenshots by code, when pressing a GUILayout.Button :)

Answer 1

I made a script for this using InternalEditorUtility.ReadScreenPixel.

At first I actually had it as you requested on a GUILayout.Button but decided to instead provide a more general solution here which is completely independent from the EditorWindow itself.
(You could still call EditorScreenshotExtension.Screenshot(); from the GUILayout.Button anyway.)

I rather added a global MenuItem with ShortCut so you actually can take a screenshot of any currently active (last clicked/focused) EditorWindow!

EditorScreenshotExtension.cs

using System.IO;
using UnityEditor;
using UnityEditorInternal;
using UnityEngine;

public static class EditorScreenshotExtension
{
    [MenuItem("Screenshot/Take Screenshot %#k")]
    private static void Screenshot()
    {
        // Get actvive EditorWindow
        var activeWindow = EditorWindow.focusedWindow;

        // Get screen position and sizes
        var vec2Position = activeWindow.position.position;
        var sizeX = activeWindow.position.width;
        var sizeY = activeWindow.position.height;

        // Take Screenshot at given position sizes
        var colors = InternalEditorUtility.ReadScreenPixel(vec2Position, (int)sizeX, (int)sizeY);

        // write result Color[] data into a temporal Texture2D
        var result = new Texture2D((int)sizeX, (int)sizeY);
        result.SetPixels(colors);

        // encode the Texture2D to a PNG
        // you might want to change this to JPG for way less file size but slightly worse quality
        // if you do don't forget to also change the file extension below
        var bytes = result.EncodeToPNG();

        // In order to avoid bloading Texture2D into memory destroy it
        Object.DestroyImmediate(result);

        // finally write the file e.g. to the StreamingAssets folder
        var timestamp = System.DateTime.Now;
        var stampString = string.Format("_{0}-{1:00}-{2:00}_{3:00}-{4:00}-{5:00}", timestamp.Year, timestamp.Month, timestamp.Day, timestamp.Hour, timestamp.Minute, timestamp.Second);
        File.WriteAllBytes(Path.Combine(Application.streamingAssetsPath, "Screenshot" + stampString + ".png"), bytes);

        // Refresh the AssetsDatabase so the file actually appears in Unity
        AssetDatabase.Refresh();

        Debug.Log("New Screenshot taken");
    }
}

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Since it uses UnityEditor and UnityEditorInternal make sure to place it in a folder called Editor to exlude it from any builds.

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After importing it to your project simply use CTRL + SHIFT + K to create a Screenshot of the currently active EditorWindow.

Screenshots are placed as PNG file in Assets/StreamingAssets with a timestamp in the name.

It will also add an entry to the top menu of the UniytEditor.

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The current shortcut was just a random one which is not used so far. you can change it in [MenuItem(Screenshot/Take Screenshot %#k)] following the MenuItem docs

To create a hotkey you can use the following special characters:

• % (ctrl on Windows, cmd on macOS)
• # (shift)
• & (alt)
• If no special modifier key combinations are required the key can be given after an underscore.

For example to create a menu with hotkey shift-alt-g use "MyMenu/Do Something #&g". To create a menu with hotkey g and no key modifiers pressed use _ like "MyMenu/Do Something _g".

Some special keyboard keys are supported as hotkeys, for example "#LEFT" would map to shift-left. The keys supported like this are: LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN, F1 .. F12, HOME, END, PGUP, PGDN.

A hotkey text must be preceded with a space character ("MyMenu/Do_g" won't be interpreted as hotkey, while "MyMenu/Do _g" will).

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Here in action - the first time I simply press CTRL + SHIFT + K after having focused the Project view last; the second time I focus the Inspector and use the menu item to take the screenshot