pages, not a giant strip ↓

How to turn a scrolling screenshot into a multi-page PDF

Don't send a 9,000-pixel-tall image. Capture a long page, chat or document on your Mac and export it as a clean, printable multi-page PDF (A4 or Letter) with smart page breaks.

Short answer: scrolling screenshots come out as one giant image — awkward to print, share or read. Lovely Screenshots captures the long page and exports it as a proper multi-page PDF (A4 or Letter), breaking pages on whitespace so no line of text is ever cut in half.

The problem with one giant screenshot

Scrolling capture tools — CleanShot X, Shottr, and others — all produce a single very tall image. Fine for a quick look; terrible the moment you want to print it, attach it to a report, or archive it. Printing crops it arbitrarily, and a 12:1 aspect ratio reads like a supermarket receipt.

People ask for exactly this on Reddit: “Is there a screenshot app that can take a scrolling screenshot and turn it into pages, not one large scrolling screenshot?” — that's this feature.

Scrolling capture → PDF pages in Lovely

  1. Take a scrolling capture. Press ⌘⇧5 and pick Scroll (or choose Scrolling Capture from the menu bar), drag a box over the scrollable area, and scroll to the end. Press Return to finish.
  2. Open the PDF export. The capture appears as a card on the shelf. Hover it and click the PDF button in the bottom-right corner — it only appears on scrolling captures.
  3. Pick a page size. Choose A4 (default) or Letter in the save dialog. Lovely slices the tall image into pages, breaking on whitespace between blocks — never through a line of text.
  4. Save and share. You get a clean multi-page PDF that prints properly, attaches nicely to email, and reads like a document instead of a 9,000-pixel-tall image.
Tip: the page breaks snap to the biggest whitespace gaps — between chat messages, cards or paragraphs — so each page starts at a natural boundary. A dark-mode capture keeps its dark background in the PDF.

Frequently asked questions

Why pages instead of one long image?

A single tall PNG is awkward everywhere paper-shaped documents are expected: printing crops it, email previews shrink it to a sliver, and PDF viewers show one absurdly long page. Splitting it into A4/Letter pages makes the capture behave like a normal document.

How does Lovely decide where to break pages?

It looks for real gaps — the whitespace between paragraphs, messages or cards — near each page boundary and cuts in the middle of the gap. It deliberately ignores the thin spacing between lines inside a paragraph, so text is never sliced mid-line.

Can Safari do this natively?

Safari's File → Export as PDF saves a web page as a PDF, but as one continuous page, not paginated sheets — and it only works for web pages in Safari. Lovely's export works on anything you can scroll: chat threads, native apps, code, spreadsheets.

Is this free?

PDF export is included with scrolling capture, which is part of Lovely Pro — a one-time $12 (beta price), no subscription.

try it free — it lives in your menu bar ↓ Download Lovely Screenshots