On a Zoom or Teams meeting with a colleague who won’t stop moving those damn slides along on their shared screen? Whether you’re not able to keep up in the moment or a whole plethora of other reasons you might want to know how to take a screenshot on Windows, we’ve got you covered.
Taking a screenshot on Windows seems like it’s been around since like forever. However, not everyone might have had a good reason to use it.
Thankfully, if you are a beginner, Windows makes it easy – it some cases it’s basically just the press of one button. Windows also offer more complex solutions for more specific needs, and all are super useful.
A slightly different tool to screenshotting that Windows offers is “Snipping Tool”. This allows you to use a resizable box to take a capture of some of your screen – a handy piece of software for taking a capture of a specific portion of the screen. We will be focusing on the more traditional method of screenshotting (via the Print Screen key).
Related: How to download Windows 10
How to take a screenshot on Windows
While taking a screenshot on Windows is pretty simple, the operating system allows you to do it in a number of ways for your convenience. Let’s start with your entire screen:
- Simply find the key marked “PrtSc” and click it
- The image is now on your clipboard
- Head to an image editing program like Paint to paste in your screenshot
- You can now edit and/or save the image
Taking a screenshot of your whole screen was the norm for a long time but, now, you can take a screenshot of a specific window:
- On the window you would like to screenshot, click the menu bar at the top
- Click Alt and Prt Sc together
- You now have a screenshot of the window in your clipboard
- Paste the image into an image editing program like Paint
An even more recent addition to Windows is instantly saving the screenshot as a file. This is super handy if you need to take a lot of screenshots one after the other so don’t have time to save each yourself. Here’s how you do it:
- Press Prt Sc and the Windows logo key together
- The screen should dim to indicate a screenshot was taken
- You can access these screenshots in “Pictures” > Screenshots”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.