# Need to disable all the steps snaps in Elastic Synthetic

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916
**Category:** Synthetics
**Tags:** synthetics
**Created:** [April 12, 2021, 4:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916 "2021-04-12T16:53:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![shahidraza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahidraza/32/102889_2.png) [@shahidraza](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahidraza)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2021, 4:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/1 "2021-04-12T16:53:25Z")

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Hi Team,

Are there any properties that allow us to capture images only when any errors happen in the configured flows? As of now, we can see more than 1 TB of Data utilized within 1 month and only with 2-3 flows.

I am ok if we don't capture images as well.

Currently, I am using 7.11 Synthetic packages.

Thanks in advance.

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### Author: ![shahidraza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahidraza/32/102889_2.png) [@shahidraza](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahidraza)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2021, 9:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/2 "2021-04-13T09:48:46Z")

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@Andrew_Cholakian1 Please suggest if any possibilities.

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### Author: ![shahzad31](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahzad31/32/51637_2.png) [@shahzad31](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahzad31)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2021, 3:59am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/3 "2021-04-19T03:59:57Z")

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Hi @shahidraza , on synthetics we do support the option [CLI Options](https://github.com/elastic/synthetics/blob/master/src/parse_args.ts#L62) of setings  
`--screenshots=false`  
to not capture screenshots, depending on your setup you can pass that flag. In that case it will not capture step snaps.

Regards

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### Author: ![drewpost](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/drewpost/32/46162_2.png) [@drewpost](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/drewpost)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2021, 12:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/4 "2021-04-19T12:17:09Z")

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Hi @shahidraza - Just to expand on Shahzad's reply, we're looking at putting in proper lifecycle management and scenario rules on when to capture screenshots as well as how long to keep the really rich object-level detail. Whilst his solution is a good temporary fix to the significant data volumes you're seeing, I just wanted to let you know that we will be addressing this properly as well.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![shahidraza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahidraza/32/102889_2.png) [@shahidraza](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahidraza)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2021, 9:47am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/5 "2021-04-21T09:47:11Z")

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@shahzad31 what is the flag I can use in heartbeat.docker.yml.

I am using heartbeat.docker.yml and todo folder to run my docker synthetic environment.

Thanks for sharing the option --screenshots=false but please share the parameters which I can use in my configuration either in heartbeat.docker.yml or run.sh file.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,  
Shahid

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![shahidraza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahidraza/32/102889_2.png) [@shahidraza](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahidraza)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2021, 9:47am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/6 "2021-04-21T09:47:50Z")

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Awesome news @drewpost🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![shahidraza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahidraza/32/102889_2.png) [@shahidraza](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahidraza)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2021, 10:00am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/7 "2021-04-21T10:00:14Z")

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@shahzad31 I made below changes in parse\_args.ts file but its not working. Please suggest

1. option('--screenshots=false', 'take screenshot for each step')
2. option('--screenshots', 'false')

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Andrew\_Cholakian1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andrew_cholakian1/32/3612_2.png) [@Andrew\_Cholakian1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Andrew_Cholakian1)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2021, 12:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/8 "2021-04-21T12:49:49Z")

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To be clear, this needs to be present in Heartbeat as an option to be passed through, apologies for the confusion here. I'm thinking we should prioritize switching to `jpeg` screenshots here: [Add option for JPEG screenshots · Issue #233 · elastic/synthetics · GitHub](https://github.com/elastic/synthetics/issues/233) as a first step, that should cut down on file size to start with.

I've opened [[Heartbeat] Flexible screenshot functionality · Issue #25201 · elastic/beats · GitHub](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/25201) to track the heartbeat side of this.

In the meantime, you could always use Elasticsearch's delete by query feature to remove just screenshots, here's an example:

> <https://gist.github.com/andrewvc/b9361cd080ac6931173869ff61103f3f>

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![shahidraza](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shahidraza/32/102889_2.png) [@shahidraza](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shahidraza)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/9 "2021-04-23T15:19:24Z")

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@vigneshshanmugam Hey do we have option to disable the every steps snapshot?

Thanks in advance

Regards,  
Shahid

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### Author: ![vigneshshanmugam](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vigneshshanmugam/32/40324_2.png) [@vigneshshanmugam](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vigneshshanmugam)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2021, 2:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/10 "2021-04-26T14:58:22Z")

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Hi @shahidraza,

The new version of Synthetics library `1.0.0-beta.0` already uses the JPEG images for step screenshots, which should greatly reduce the storage as we saw 50% reduction in the image size for some of our tests. Please update your suite to point to that version - [synthetics/package.json at 86ca02d47b6eab8d1b7e88385b66123b0a36a164 · elastic/synthetics · GitHub](https://github.com/elastic/synthetics/blob/86ca02d47b6eab8d1b7e88385b66123b0a36a164/examples/todos/package.json#L8)

But our long term strategy that would work for everyone is to prioritize this issue - [[Heartbeat] Flexible screenshot functionality · Issue #25201 · elastic/beats · GitHub](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/25201) as Andrew mentioned and provide a way to configure heartbeat.

Let us know if you need any other help.

Thanks,  
Vignesh

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2021, 2:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-to-disable-all-the-steps-snaps-in-elastic-synthetic/269916/11 "2021-05-20T14:58:44Z")

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