[Update: Spotted in Canary] Google is adding a screenshot editor to Chrome for Android

XDA

By Pranob Mehrotra

Published Jun 24, 2020

Strings of code recently discovered in the Chromium Gerrit suggest that Google might add a screenshot editor to Chrome for Android.

Update 1 (06/24/2020 @ 06:38 AM ET): The Screenshot Editor has made its way to Chrome's Canary release channel. Scroll to the bottom for more information. The article as published on December 11, 2019, is preserved below.

In order to make annotations a simpler and more straightforward process, Google rolled out a new markup tool in Android 9 Pie last year. While the tool was initially limited to devices running Android 9, it was soon unofficially ported over to phones running older versions of Android. Earlier this year in September, Google started testing a couple of new features in the Google Photos app, and among these was a new markup tool. The markup tool was released to Google Photos towards the end of last month and now Google is planning on bringing a similar feature to Chrome on Android.

The upcoming screenshot editor was spotted in a recently merged commit on the Chromium Gerrit. The commit in question reveals code regarding a new flag for the "Chrome Share Screenshots" feature that "Enables UI to edit and share screenshots".

As of now, it isn't clear what the editing UI would look like or what features would be included, but we can expect it to be somewhat similar to the editing UI found in other Google apps. A bug report for the feature also reveals some key information regarding the feature and suggests that the screenshot image editor will "utilize the Ink image editor library".

As of now, the feature seems to be in the early stages of development so it would be quite a while before it hits the Chrome stable release on Android. However, we can expect to see the feature in action in a beta version of the browser sometime in the near future. Since we're talking about upcoming features in Google Chrome, it's worth noting that Google is also testing a radically new UI for Chrome's new tab page. The new UI is a far cry from the current new tab page and shifts all of the UI elements towards the top of the display.

Source: Chromium Gerrit, Chromium bugs

Update: Chrome for Android's Screenshot Editor spotted in Canary release channel

Chrome for Android's Screenshot Editor functionality has made its way to the Canary release channel. As spotted by Techdows, the screenshot function within the browser rests under the Share option. Once you click on the screenshot button, the screenshot editor comes up. However, the edit button does not do anything at the moment, but we expect the functionality to take shape in the coming releases.

You do need to toggle the Sharing Hub and Share Screenshot flags, but that shouldn't be required when the feature makes it way to the stable release channel.