Want to take a screenshot of your desktop in Windows 10? We'll show you how to capture your entire desktop or a single window using quick shortcuts like Windows key + Print Screen and with the Xbox Game Bar. You'll also learn how to use Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch to capture, crop, and annotate your screenshots exactly how you want.
The simplest, and most obvious way to take a screenshot in Windows 10 is probably the button that everyone has on their keyboard: Print Screen, which may also be labeled PrtScrn, PrSc, or some similarly abbreviated name.
How to Take Screenshots in Windows 10
There are two options when it comes to taking screenshots with built-in Windows applications: Snip & Sketch, which was released for Windows 10 with the October 2018 update, and the tried-and-true Windows Snipping Tool, which has been a part of Windows since Vista.
Method 2: If your typecover has a PrtScn key, you can also take a screenshot by holding down the Windows key on your keyboard and pressing PrtScn. The screen will be saved to the Screenshots folder described in Method 1.
Method 5: Double-click the top button of your Surface Pen to take a screenshot of your desktop. The full screenshot will be saved in your Screenshots folder on OneDrive, but this method also gives you the option to crop your image immediately.
When you capture screenshots with the Snipping Tool, they are not automatically saved anywhere, including on the clipboard. If you want to keep the screenshot when you close the Snipping Tool, you need to choose File > Save As and save the screenshot to the desired location on your hard drive.
Whatever your reason, there are lots of ways to take screenshots in Windows 10 or 11 and which method you choose depends on what you need to capture and how you intend to share it. Below, we'll show you how to capture Windows screenshots that grab the whole desktop, a single window or a custom area of it. We'll show you how to grab entire web pages that don't fit on the screen and frames from YouTube videos. If you need to capture video, see our tutorial on how to screen record in Windows.
The easiest way to take a screenshot in Windows 10 or Windows 11 is to just hit the Print Screen key (sometimes abbreviated as PrtSc or Print Scrn) and your entire desktop will be copied to your clipboard. While easy, the Print Screen method is a little clunky.
If you just want to take a screenshot of your entire screen and save it as a file, the easiest way is hitting Windows Key + Print Screen. Your entire desktop will darken for a second to show that the screenshot has been captured, and a new PNG file will be saved to the Pictures/Screenshots folder. Each file will be given the name Screenshot (#).png where # is replaced by 1, 2, 3, etc.
It's important to note that this only screenshots an active window, not an entire app if the app has more than one window. So, for example, if your program has a pop-up menu that appears in a child window, it will only capture the child window, not the parent behind it.
Perhaps you want to take a Windows screenshot that shows just a small portion of the desktop. It could be a portion of a web page in your browser or a series of windows. Whatever the case, hit Windows Key + Shift + S and the Windows Snipping tool will launch, immediately giving you a rectangular box you can draw around whatever you want to capture from Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Sometimes you need to take a Windows screenshot not right now, but a few seconds from now. Why wait? Because if you need to take a screenshot of yourself activating a pulldown menu or some other item, hitting the Print Screen key or another key combination could make your menu go away before the OS snaps a picture. So you want to activate a screenshot that occurs in the future, giving you time to get to that menu.
Sometimes you're watching a video on YouTube and you want to capture an individual frame from it. Sure, you could pause the video at just the right point, set the video to full screen and take a screenshot of it, but sometimes you'll get things you don't want in the shot such as a play button, timeline or the title of the video.
If you're really anti third-party software, you search for and launch "Steps Recorder," hit the record button, perform the step you want, stop the recording and then enlarge the screenshot Windows took of that step (pointer and all) by clicking on it. However, you'll now need to take a screenshot of this screenshot, because the tool doesn't provide an easy way to export it.
But here we're concerned with screenshots in Windows 10. Below, I walk you through the several ways to capture the Windows 10 PC screen so that you can make an informed decision on which method works best for you.
You'll want to snap screenshots on your smartphone and other devices besides your Windows PC. Our walk-through of How to Take a Screenshot on Any Device covers the process used by all of your non-PC gadgets with screens.
Dave Johnson/Business InsiderYou can choose the kind of screenshot that Snipping Tool takes with the program's menus.3. Click New, and your screen will freeze. You can then use the mouse to create the screenshot. The screenshot will then appear in the Snipping Tool window.4. If you want to include something like a tooltip, which only appears after a mouse movement, you can specify how long to wait before taking the screenshot using the Delay menu.5. If you want to, once you've taken your screenshot, you can use the drawing tools to annotate the screenshot. 6. When you're done, click "File" and then click "Save As" to save the completed screenshot to your computer.7. You can also click the copy button in the Snipping Tool window - it looks like two pages laid over one another - to copy the image to your clipboard.
I've considered using VirtualBox or VMWare as suggested in How can I take screenshots of the PC before it boots up?, but this wont allow me to capture a computer-specific login issue*. The aforementioned question also specifically asked for solutions before the PC boots into Windows.
There's a tendency with issues like this to only look at solutions within the problem domain - i.e. you're looking at a way to get the computer to take a screenshot, not looking for a way to get a shot of the screen.
Learning how to take a screenshot on Windows systems is the simplest way to preserve or share any visual content from a website, program, or video game. You can take it and send it via email, social media, or file-sharing sites with just a few clicks.
One of the easiest ways to save a screenshot taken with the print screen key is to paste it into your photo editing software of choice. For example, you can use Microsoft Paint, which comes free with all relevant versions of Windows.
You can now edit the screenshot with the pen, highlighter, and eraser tools. It also offers a few unique options compared to copying and pasting something into Paint, such as the Delay mode for taking delayed (timed) screenshots. You can also highlight something in the screenshot and email it directly from the Snipping Tool.
After opening the Xbox Game Bar, you can either press the camera button in the top-left corner or take a screenshot without opening the menu by pressing the print screen shortcut keys: Windows key + Alt + PrtScn.
To take a screenshot on your Surface device, press and hold the Windows button and simultaneously press the Volume Down button. When it takes a screenshot, the screen will get dimmer.
You can use the built-in keyboard key shortcuts, Windows tools like Snip & Sketch, or a third-party app in Chrome. Even PowerPoint has a built-in function for taking screenshots and including them in your presentation.
If you want to take a quick and accurate screenshot on your screen and avoid saving it into the clipboard, you can press the Windows and PrtScn keys together. This will bring up the thumbnail on the screen at the bottom-left side when the screenshot capture step is done.
The Snipping tool is another solution available on Windows 10 PCs that makes it possible to grab screenshots on the device. The utility is available for Windows users from the Windows Vista version, including the Windows 11 update.
Step 4: After setting up the features for the Snipping Tool to take the screenshot, press the New Option. The screen will appear with a white overlay showcasing the uncaptured area.
The Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts and the Snipping Tool allow you to take a screenshot of what you can see on your screen at that moment. So, what do you do if you cannot see all the important information at once, such as with a scrolling website? For such cases, you can use special add-ons for your browser.
What is a screenshot and how do you take them? Perhaps you have already had to ask yourself this question when technical support asked you for a screenshot of error messages you were receiving. You are probably also familiar with tutorials that usually provide step-by-step instructions with screenshots. Here you will learn all about screenshots.
The following content will focus on how to take a screenshot in Minecraft in different editions or on different devices. If you want to learn more about Minecraft video game, just visit MiniTool partition software.
Press Windows + G keys to firstly open the game Settings overlay. Then, click the Minecraft screenshot button (the camera) under Game Capturing to take a screenshot.
On Windows PCs, Minecraft screenshots are stored in the .minecraft\screenshots folder within AppData\Roaming. As for how to access Minecraft screenshots folder, the Minecraft screenshot folder can be accessed by entering %appdata%\.minecraft\screenshots in the File Explorer address bar. It can also be obtained through Settings > Resource Packs > Open resource pack folder (going up one level). 2ff7e9595c
Comments