Android 16 may finally be able to deliver true HDR screenshots

The latest beta gives us a clear look at what to expect from the upcoming major release, including the likes of a dedicated account switcher widget for your device’s home screen, new features for the Advanced Protection Program, support for UltraHDR images in HEIC format and new camera controls, granular regional settings, and a lot more.

Now, live with the latest beta, credible Android analyst Mishaal Rahman has found that Google has flipped the switch on HDR (High Dynamic Range) screenshots, and there’s source code to back it up, as highlighted in an Android Authority report.

For what it’s worth, currently, screenshots of HDR content taken on devices that support viewing in HDR are saved in SDR (Standard Dynamic Range). The limitation is on the software side, with Android reportedly not preserving additional HDR color information on top of the basic SDR when encoding screenshots.

Google made progress with Android 13 and Android 14, but not quite enough. The tech giant introduced end-to-end support for HDR video with Android 13, but screenshots were still saved in SDR, resulting in dimmed regions within screenshots. With Android 14, Google introduced Ultra HDR, building upon the JPEG image format. However, the issue here was with encoding SDR and HDR in one single screenshot.

For example, let’s say you see an HDR image on Instagram and want to save it for later. The ideal screenshot would capture the image in HDR and the surrounding (Instagram) UI in SDR. However, with Android 14 too, screenshots remained in SDR. The challenge was to find a way to encode both SDR and HDR color information within a single image file.

Capture screenshots in ‘true HDR’

Subsequently, Android 15 made progress by introducing a local tone-mapping algorithm for screenshots, essentially capturing the dynamic range of HDR while preserving the main content’s surrounding SDR UI. These screenshots too are saved in SDR. Building on top of it, Android 16 might begin saving these images in “true HDR.”

Rahman highlighted that with Android 16 Beta 2, screenshots with HDR elements are saved in the HDR format. This was immediately noticeable when viewing sample photos in the Google Photos app with an HDR-supported phone. Further evidence comes in the form of source code found SurfaceFlinger, an Android system service that overlooks screen rendering. It highlighted a “true HDR screenshots” feature that can reportedly be enabled/disabled. These true HDR screenshots are saved in PNG with HDR gainmaps embedded on top of them.

Considering the implementation is already live in beta, it is very likely to make its way to stable in Q2, potentially with a dedicated setting toggle for it.