Capture Full-Page Screenshots: Complete Guide

Full-Page Screenshot Capture

Full-page screenshots capture an entire webpage from top to bottom, regardless of viewport height. This is essential for archiving web content, creating documentation, and capturing long-form articles.

Basic Full-Page Capture

Enable full-page capture with the full_page parameter:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer snap_your_key" \
  "https://apisnap.dev/api/screenshot?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot&full_page=true" \
  -o full-page.png

SnapAPI automatically detects the total page height, scrolls to the bottom, and captures everything in a single image.

Handling Lazy-Loaded Content

Many modern pages load content lazily as you scroll. For these pages, use the delay parameter to give the page time to load all content before capture:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer snap_your_key" \
  "https://apisnap.dev/api/screenshot?url=https://example.com/feed&full_page=true&delay=3000" \
  -o feed.png

The 3-second delay ensures lazy-loaded images and infinite-scroll content have time to render.

PDF Export for Archival

For document archival, PDF format preserves full-page content in a printable format:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer snap_your_key" \
  "https://apisnap.dev/api/screenshot?url=https://example.com/report&format=pdf&full_page=true" \
  -o report.pdf

File Size Considerations

Full-page screenshots of long pages can produce large files (5-50MB for PNGs). Use JPEG format with quality=75 to reduce file sizes by 80-90% with minimal visual quality loss. Consider splitting very long captures into multiple viewport-sized screenshots for easier handling.