How to Share PS5 Screenshots and Gameplay Videos to Your Phone

Sharing a screenshot between your PS5 and your smartphone should be a straightforward process. And it is, given that PlayStation has its own mobile app. You can set most of your Captures to upload to the PlayStation app, and share them from there (although this has its limitations in terms of what exactly you can auto-upload and share).

Want to share PS5 screenshots and gameplay capture to your mobile device? Here's how...

What Are PS5 Screenshots and Gameplay Videos?

When you're playing a game on your PS5, you'll know that pressing the Create button allows you to take a screenshot or record video footage from your gameplay. Capturing your gameplay via stills or videos is easy to achieve.

A screenshot is simply a single frame captured from your game that could show an impressive moment of gameplay, or of you achieving your latest trophy. It's a still image.

Gameplay videos capture several minutes of footage and act like any other recorded video. This means you can record gameplay and then show off your killstreak on Warzone or your awesome trick shot in Rocket League.

So, now you know what these two features are, how do you get the content from your PS5 to your phone?

You can share your screenshots from the PS5 to your mobile, simply by using the Auto-Upload feature that Sony brought to PlayStation and the associated mobile app in 2022. Enabling the feature is a simple process. Here's what you need to do:

First, make sure you have the latest software update installed on your PS5, and that you have the latest version of the PlayStation app on your smartphone or tablet.
From your PS5 Home Screen head to Media Gallery.
If the feature is available to you, you'll immediately see a pop-up on your Media Gallery asking if you'd like to enable Auto-Upload. Highlight and select Enable Auto Upload. The feature is now available via your console, but you're not finished yet.

PS5 media library captures enable auto upload option screen

Head to the PlayStation App on your smartphone or tablet. If the feature is available, a pop-up will appear to notify you.
Navigate to Game Library via the option wheel at the bottom of the app screen.
At the top, you'll see Captures. Tap it.
You'll now get the same Enable Auto-Upload pop-up on your smartphone screen. Confirm you want to Auto-Upload your content.

PlayStation app auto upload notification

PlayStation app eneable auto uploads captures

This completes the setup process, and any captures you create will now upload to your PlayStation app. Note that you only get 14 days to download your captures to your mobile device, or share them from the PlayStation app. After this, they disappear. Auto-captures and trophy captures won't auto-upload either, only manual captures with the DualSense Capture button.

If you accidentally navigate away from the Media Gallery before enabling auto-upload, or don't want to enable auto-upload right away, you can enable later it via your PS5 system settings.

From your PS5 Game home screen, go to Settings.
Scroll to Captures and Broadcasts and tap X to select the option.

Highlight Auto Update and hit X to enable the feature.

Your captures will now automatically upload to the app.

Once you have captured an image or video to share, you just need to head to the PlayStation app and your capture will be ready to share in the aforementioned Captures menu. Just select the capture you want to share, then select the Share icon from the bottom of the screen (it is a curved arrow with a dot below it). Then you can share with your PlayStation friends, or tap Share via to send with your preferred messaging app, or upload to social media.

What If Auto-Upload Doesn't Work?

As mentioned above, auto upload only works with manual captures taken using the DualSense Capture button. So, what do you do if you want to share auto-captures, such as when you nail a platinum trophy? You can use these methods instead.

To share your screenshots to your phone using PlayStation Parties, you'll need:

A PS5
A mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet
The PlayStation app (available on Android or iOS)
An internet connection on your PS5 and your mobile device.

1. Locate the screenshot or video you'd like to share on your PS5

The quickest and easiest way to find your PlayStation 5 Gallery and, therefore, the screenshot you'd like to share, is by tapping the Create button on your DualSense controller.

This will bring up the Create menu and the bottom-left of the Create pop-up should hold your most recent screenshot. Highlight it with the cursor, and tap X. This will open the image menu and with it the option Share. You can cycle through all your captured media with the L1 and R1 trigger buttons.

Alternatively, if you'd rather search in a grid view rather than a carousel, select Go to Media Gallery. This opens your screenshot and video collection. In here, you can find the screenshot or video you want to share with your phone.

You can also find your screenshot by going to Game Library > Installed. If you scroll to the bottom of the list of installed games, you'll see Media Library. Select that with the X button and you're in.

2. Share the Photo With a Party

Now that you've found your screenshot or video, highlight it with the cursor and, again, press X. This will bring up another menu, in which you will see the Share option. Highlight that and select it with the X button.

Here, you will see several options. You can either Send to Twitter (which we will do in the second workaround) or you can share the screenshot or video to your Parties (which is essentially the PS5 messaging service).

Either select an existing Party with the X button (a message thread between you and your friend/s) or create a new Party. Once you have done either of these, a message window will pop up, featuring your screenshot and a message field. You don't need the message field so don't worry about changing that. It is the screenshot you want.

Just hit Send and it will post your screenshot or video into the party chat.

3. Find the Screenshot/Video on Your Mobile Device

Now all you need to do is head to the PlayStation App on your mobile device. In the top-left of the screen on the app homepage you'll see the Parties icon. It looks like two speech balloons. Tap that and it will open the Parties menu.

In here, select the party chat to which you sent the screenshot or video. Lo-and-behold, there's your created content waiting to be saved to your device!

Tap the screenshot to open it. When the image opens, at the bottom-right of the screen is a download button. Tap that and the image or video will save to your mobile device. You can now share it as you please.

Sharing your PS5 screenshots via Twitter is another workaround. Some steps are the same as above, and you'll need the same tools, aside from the PlayStation App. Just make sure you've got the Twitter app on your mobile device, and you have linked your Twitter account to your PS5.

If you don't have a linked account, you can create one by going to Settings > Users and Accounts > Link With Other Services > Twitter. You can link to other social accounts here too, if you like.

1. Share Your Photo to Twitter

You can follow the same steps as those above to locate your created content on your PS5. Once you reach the Share stage, simply select the Send to Twitter option. If you have a linked Twitter account, then the Post Tweet window will pop up.

Again don't worry about the autofill text that will appear, you're only interested in your created content. Just select Post and confirm by pressing X. Now you've posted your image or video on Twitter.

2. Find the Screenshot/Video on Your Mobile Device

On your mobile device, fire up the Twitter app. Head to your Profile page, and you'll see the content from your PS5 posted as your most recent Tweet. Just click the image to open it, then click the Options menu at the top, signified by three vertical dots.

Then hit Save and your screenshot or gameplay footage will save to your mobile device. At last, you've shared your PS5 captures via Twitter. Note that you can also use this method to save PS5 footage to your laptop or desktop computer, in case you wanted to edit it into a larger video. Just use Twitter's desktop client instead.

Hopefully now you understand how to get your PS5-created content on your mobile, so you can taunt your Xbox-owning friends with it. This is an excellent feature, which PlayStation users have long been shouting for, and one of many features to arrive in the advent of the PS5.