The PlayStation 4 was built with sharing in mind. There’s even a “share” button on the controller, for crying out loud. But at the moment, it can be kind of difficult to access your shared stuff without spamming your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
For now, you can only share videos you record to Facebook — Sony says YouTube integration is coming. But video, schmideo — I’m just as excited about the PS4’s screenshot capability. I loved that Sony made their Vita handheld capable of taking screenshots, and have more great Persona 4 Golden screenshots on my various devices than I know what to do with. I’m also a screenshot addict on PC, constantly riding F12 in search of sharable moments.
The PS4’s screenshot tool isn’t all it could be, at least not yet. For starters, you can only share your screenshots one of two ways: Either post them on Facebook or put them on Twitter. Until Sony makes it possible to directly access your Screenshots on your local network and sync them to your computer (like you can with the Vita), the whole thing feels unwieldy and incomplete.
If you do decide to share screenshots to Facebook or Twitter, you’l probably have the usual spam-fears. You likely have your PS4 linked to your actual Facebook account, since that lets you do the cool real-name ID stuff. But who wants to risk spamming their Twitter followers and Facebook friends with #PS4share screenshots? Not me, anyway. Fortunately, Twitter allows for a decent workaround. Plenty of people have already been using this trick, but I figured that on the off-chance you wanted to get at your PS4 screenshots and hadn’t figured it out, I’d share.
The trick is: Set up a dummy twitter account. Make one with an easy-to-remember name and password (mine is KirksPS4), then make it a private account. Follow it from your actual Twitter account. Then, log into the dummy account from your PS4 under Settings>PSN>Link with other services>Twitter.
The other thing you’ll want to do (if you’re like me) is set the Share button to immediately take a screenshot at first press. As outlined in our PS4 tips post, that’s accessed by holding down the Share button to enter the Share menu, pressing Options and setting the “Share button control type” to “Easy Screenshots.”
Once you’ve done that, you can hit the Share button as quickly as you’d hit F12 in Steam, then later go through your pictures and tweet the ones you want to keep. Visit your dummy account on Twitter and pull the screenshots onto your phone, computer or other device and share ’em as you like.
Plenty of things about this aren’t ideal. For starters, it’s a logistical headache, when this whole thing should (and hopefully will) be seamless. Also, shared images come down at 1024×576 resolution. We can only hope that Sony will add support for full HD 1920×1080 screenshots in the future. The PS4 doesn’t have many Twitter functions at the moment, but when it does, you might want to link your actual account, since you can’t switch between two accounts easily. Then again, hopefully by the time Sony adds more Twitter functionality, they’ll also make it easier to export your screenshots.
It’s nice that there’s a way to get at them at all, though. The existing resolution isn’t terrible, and the images are fine for sharing that pretty vista or goofy easter egg you found. Here are a few shots of Assassin’s Creed IV I took this weekend:
Not great in terms of resolution, but not terrible by any means. The whole process is much more complicated than it should be, but it’s still a good way to access your PS4 screenshots without worrying about spamming your friends, losing followers or cluttering up anyone’s Facebook feed.
And hey, if you’ve got any great gameplay shots you’ve taken over the last couple weeks, I hope you’ll share them below.
Comments
8 responses to “How To Share PS4 Screenshots Without Spamming Your Friends”
It would be nice if Sony added some social networking functionality to PSN itself and allowed you to just share your pictures / video that way. I.e. go to your friends list, select a friend and then have the option to view their shared images / video without having to resort to external services like Facebook or YouTube or whatever. The only people likely to be interested in this stuff are my PSN friends anyway – most of my Facebook friends wouldn’t really give a toss.
IE. Miiverse?
http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu/built-in-software/#/miiverse
Miiverse is really awesome, but so slow 🙁
That is exactly what I want. Tried to record an awesome dunk in NBA 2K14 and had 15 minutes of footage I could not edit without posting to facebook. I just wanted the last few seconds of the clip for myself but couldn’t find a way to do it.
You can edit the video, then drop out before posting it to facebook. The edit will then overwrite the original video.
I’d imagine it’s on the way… They pretty much have the beginnings of it in the ‘updates’ section… Showing what games you’ve been playing, trophies you’ve received etc… Seems like a logical extension of that. Surprising it’s not there already actually.
I totally agree about not wanting to spam. I tried it one or twice just to see how it worked, but hardly anyone I have on Facebook or follows me on Twitter cares, the people who would are in my PSN network though!
I guess they decided the free marketing on Twitter and Facebook was more important that a useful feature :/
Is it just me, or are the share and option buttons on the DS4 not only hard to find… but also hard to actually depress?
Or, there’s this option when you set up your facebook account to allow your screenshots and videos to only be visible to you… Not sure if it works as advertised, as I’ve not used the share feature yet.
That said, I’d love it if they just give you access to the files so you can do with them what you will. Dropbox or Google+ integration would be ideal, considering I try to avoid Facebook like the plague…
It works 🙂 It’s actually how I’ve got my Facebook integration set up. In fact, pretty much every external app gets the “Me Only” treatment until a few months of use so I know what it’s actually going to be spamming my friends with.
With facebook, fill your “close friends” list with people that will not take offense to your nerdy gaming ways and share it with that list only.
that’s how i’ve done it. there’s only a small group of IRL friends that get to see my psn spam.