Roel van der Ven

How to take screenshots on your Android Phone with Mac OS X

Yes, this is ridiculously complicated and a lot of people have been writing about ways to do it. There are quite some suggestions to install tools, run programs and finally fire up the application to take the screenshot, but it can be a lot simpler if you’re running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Lion. Here’s how to do it:

1. Download the Android SDK here and extract the zip to a comfortable location on your Mac.
2. Don’t download any JDK tools. Apple ships OS X with this built-in.
3. Add the following to your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_rc:

   export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home` 
   

4. Enable USB Debugging on your phone in settings via Settings > Applications > Development, and make sure it’s connected via USB.
5. Open a new Terminal window and navigate to the Android SDK folder.
6. Run the following command in your Terminal to fire up DDMS:

   $ ./tools/ddms