Safari website screenshot creates PDF on iCloud Drive downloads folder

[emulajavi]

Hi.

on my iPad with iPadOS 15

when I’m browsing a website using Safari and do a screenshot with the vol+ and power button.… a screenshot is taken BUT… also a PDF of the full website from top to bottom is generated and saved into the Downloads folder on iCloud Drive.

I don’t find any setting to disable this behavior.… so the PDF isn’t generated and saved

can anyone help me?

thank you!

 

[emulajavi]

No one??

If I take a screenshot (https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/iphone/iphc872c0115/ios) while browsing a website using Safari on iOS 15.... a PDF is automatically created (and saved on Downloads folder of iCloud Drive) containing a screenshot of the full website.

thanks

 

[svenmany]

I know there is a way to get the behavior you're seeing, but I don't know why it's happening automatically.

When you take a screenshot and quickly click on the image on the lower left of the screen, you can then work on the "Full Page" and save it to files (with the default location being the last folder used).

Could you have an extension installed in Safari which is causing this?

 

[emulajavi]

I don’t have any extensions installed and I also don’t have any ’experimental features’ changed from default in Settings.


It’s very strange because it happens randomly on my iPhone and on my iPad so when I try to reproduce the behavior I’m not able to do it, but from time to time when I look into the downloads folder on iCloud Drive, I find a bunch of websites saved there as pdf, and all I can say is that they are websites I’ve ‘screenshoted‘ recently either to save a picture on the camera roll or share a picture of part of it (touching on the bottom left thumbnail, cropping the picture, touching on share, sharing the picture via WhatsApp and then touching the red recycle bin so to no save the picture in the camera roll).

 

[svenmany]

I've read that the full page screenshots are supported in Mail as well as Safari; they both support taking a screenshot of the scrollable page outside of what's visible on the screen. Could you test in Mail and see if the same thing happens?

It's not so great that it's random; makes it hard to test.

 

[scotty321]

This is a very weird Safari iPad bug.

You can see this bug in action by taking these steps:

1. Launch Safari on your iPad (I’m running iPadOS 15.6.1).
2. Go to a website, and take a screenshot of the website.
3. Tap on the screenshot in the corner to view it.
4. Tap on the “Done” button and choose “Save To Photos”.

Steps #3 and #4 are required to trigger this bug.

BUG: A copy of the screenshot in PDF format will appear in your iCloud Downloads folder.

 

[HDFan]

Unable to reproduce. Checked downloads folder in Web iCloud files immediately after the pictures were uploaded and nothing there.

 

[joshen]

I’ve had this on my iPhone for at least two years and thought it was standard behavior. Had gigabytes of PDFs in my iCloud Drive that I had to delete. Can’t find a way to disable it either.

 

[Blowback]

This is a very weird Safari iPad bug.

You can see this bug in action by taking these steps:

1. Launch Safari on your iPad (I’m running iPadOS 15.6.1).
2. Go to a website, and take a screenshot of the website.
3. Tap on the screenshot in the corner to view it.
4. Tap on the “Done” button and choose “Save To Photos”.

Steps #3 and #4 are required to trigger this bug.

BUG: A copy of the screenshot in PDF format will appear in your iCloud Downloads folder.

Just tried it and….yep! PDF in downloads folder! Weird bug. IPad Pro 2017…iOS 15.7 (19H12)

 

[bug]

I just noticed this today. Also does it for Mail on iOS, although we can’t reproduce that reliably. Confirmed for my wife as well.

PDFs go back to 2019 for us.

Seems like a security concern.

 

[xbpr]

I’ve seen this annoying behavior on my iPhone as well.

Take a screenshot of a webpage. Select the small image to open the editor. Select screen. Select done. Select save to photos. The screenshot appears in photos and the full page pdf appears in files.

It doesn’t happen every time. Not sure what triggers it to happen.

 

[emulajavi]

Thanks for the steps.

It’s very strange because it happens randomly, and we don’t know what triggers it.

This is a very weird Safari iPad bug.

You can see this bug in action by taking these steps:

1. Launch Safari on your iPad (I’m running iPadOS 15.6.1).
2. Go to a website, and take a screenshot of the website.
3. Tap on the screenshot in the corner to view it.
4. Tap on the “Done” button and choose “Save To Photos”.

Steps #3 and #4 are required to trigger this bug.

BUG: A copy of the screenshot in PDF format will appear in your iCloud Downloads folder.

 

[emulajavi]

Still happening randomly.

Any clues?

 

[SeanODW]

I just registered this account so I could say that this issue has been plaguing me for years. I have never turned this on anywhere and have no idea when or how it decides to stash 25MB files in my iCloud storage — which, if you don’t catch this issue, really eats up your iCloud storage space. Which makes you buy more iCloud storage space.

Just wanted to point that out in a class action hinty kind of way…

Actually, just looked closer and saw/noticed the following for the first time LOL. But it doesn’t seem to matter whether you select SCREEN or FULL PAGE, it’ll save the screenshot in Photos and sometimes save the full page PDF in Files. Weird.

 

[emulajavi]

Any news about this?

still happening to me With iOS 17.

 

[Stratox]

It’s even worse on my end. For me, no matter which download location outside of folders in iCloud I select, it always get resets to said folder. I am literally unable to save anything to "On My iPhone". I have even tried downloading straight to Dropbox, but who could’ve guessed it, my selected location get reset instantly and downloads everything to iCloud Drive/Downloads. This is so infuriating, especially since i am on the latest build, iOS 17.2.1 (21C66).

Edit
Submitted my issue directly to Apple via feedback assistant (13535803).

 

[ben12]

Just discovered it's happening on my devices and has since 2021!!

It happens on any web browser, not just Safari. Confirmed it happens with Chrome and DuckDuckGo. Also happens in the Notes app.

 

[winxmac]

Settings --> Safari --> Downloads --> On My iPhone/iCloud Drive