The people from RipDev Team working on caterpillar found a hidden feature in iPhone. This feature allows you to take screenshots which are then saved in the camera roll. The best part being “Support for taking a screenshot of iPod, Youtube, locked home screen” … This makes it the first time we could achieve it the Apple way! It just requires to patch some variables in the SpringBoard file. To watch the hack in action –

• Add http://repository.ripdev.com/ to your installer sources.
• Install the package Apple Screenshot Enabler from RipDev Category.

Read rest of the story for screenshots and instructions with video on making it work….

Now you can take screenshots by holding the home button and toggling the Mute Button. The screen will flash for a second and the screenshot will be saved to camera roll (SSH Path- ~/Media/DCIM/999APPLE/). The saved images are stored in .tiff format and they occupy 451 kB, just enough for a modest screenshot!

More Screenshots-

Credits go to Rip Dev Team for enabling this beautiful hack. Thanks are due to Apple too for implementing this feature albeit hidden!

UPDATE: It works on firmware 1.1.3 or above only but to get it to work on 1.1.2, you have to add a Boolean value called SBMobileScreenshotr that is set to true in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard.plist. To do it, use plutil command from Erica Utilities and in Putty/ Terminal execute

plutil -1 SBMobileScreenshotr ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard.plist

Thanks to Jim Danner at Hackint0sh for the method to get it work on 1.1.2

UPDATE: To add on option to enable/ disable screenshot in the Preferences.app without using one of the above procedures for different firmwares, edit /System/Library/PreferenceBundles/MobileSlideShowSettings.bundle/Photos.plist. Just above the ending where it says

</array>
<key>title</key>
<string>Photos</string>
</dict>
</plist>

add

<dict>
<key>cell</key>
<string>PSGroupCell</string>
<key>label</key>
<string>Screenshots</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>cell</key>
<string>PSSwitchCell</string>
<key>default</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>defaults</key>
<string>com.apple.springboard</string>
<key>key</key>
<string>SBMobileScreenshotr</string>
<key>label</key>
<string>Enable screenshots</string>
</dict>

This will add an option to turn the screenshot on/ off in the Photos menu in Preferences application rather than switching it on permanently.

Screenshot-