Pokemon GO‘s Johto Throwback Challenge is well underway! If you’re one of the trainers working on your Timed Research this week, you’ve got another four days to do it, and one of the tasks at hand is to take a snapshot of your Buddy Pokemon. Here’s how to take a photo or two (thousand) of your trusty Pokemon pals.
Pokemon GO: How to Take Snapshots
Back in February of 2019, Niantic Labs introduced the GO Snapshot feature as part of the year’s first major update, which allows you to pose your Pokemon for photos in augmented reality. To open Snapshot Mode, tap on the Pokeball at the bottom of the in-game map. Then select the Pokemon you’d like to photograph, and tap on the camera icon in the corner of their profile screen. AR Snapshot should launch automatically.
Find a flat, open area somewhere nearby, and pan your phone’s camera around until you see yellow footprints. That indicates that you’ve found a suitable location to place your Pokemon in AR. Tap on the footprints to unleash your Pokemon into the world, so to speak.
Swipe down on your Pokemon to make it turn in your direction, and tap it to get it to make a ferocious attack pose. If you want to deploy a different Pokemon, tap on the Pokeball return icon in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. During this week’s Johto Throwback Challenge, taking a Snapshot of the Pokemon you’ve designated as your Buddy is one of the three tasks in Step 5, and will earn you an encounter with a Shuckle.
If you take a lot of Snapshots, there’s an increasingly high chance that one of them will get photobombed suddenly by a Smeargle. You can tell if Smeargle showed up in your most recent Snapshot if your preview image pulses slightly. If Smeargle’s in your picture, you can exit out of Snapshot Mode to immediately get an Encounter with one, where you can capture Smeargle like any other Pokemon.
Good luck with the Throwback Challenge this week, trainers. If you need some extra tips or tricks, check out Prima’s Pokemon GO game hub, with articles like:
- How to get Shadow Entei in GO
- Here’s what you get for a Research Breakthrough in May 2020
- This is every task and reward for this week’s Throwback Challenge
It’s good to see that Pokemon GO‘s developers understand the most crucial thing about Pokemon: if they were real, every trainer would be on Instagram 24-7. You wouldn’t be able to unlock your phone without getting a billion photos of cute Pokemon shenanigans blasted into your eyes. Imagine this bizarre world of Pokegram with us via our official Twitter, @PrimaGames.
