How to Screenshot on Windows 11 and 10 (7 Ways)

If you only learn one keyboard shortcut from this entire site, make it this one.

Press Windows + Shift + S.

The screen dims, you drag a box around whatever you want, and it's captured. Works on Windows 11 and Windows 10, identically. On Windows 11 it also saves a file to Pictures → Screenshots automatically.

That covers about 90% of what anyone needs. The other six methods below exist for specific jobs — one window only, a game, a menu that vanishes when you click — and there's a section on what to do when Print Screen stubbornly does nothing, which is the reason most people end up on a page like this one.

Why Jake Photographed His Own Monitor

Jake runs a small mobile phone shop. A supplier's payment portal threw an error mid-transaction, and the supplier's support team asked him to send a screenshot.

So Jake picked up a phone, held it at arm's length, and took a photograph of his monitor. At an angle. With the shop's fluorescent light reflecting off the middle of the screen and his own silhouette in the corner.

The support team asked him to resend it.

"Ethan," he said that evening, "there's a proper way to do this, isn't there."

"There are seven proper ways to do this," Ethan said. "Which is the actual problem. Microsoft has added a new method roughly every two years and never removed the old ones, so every guide you find tells you something different and none of them tell you where the file went."

Jake, who had once spent twenty minutes looking for a screenshot that had never been saved anywhere, nodded with feeling.

Method 1 — Win + Shift + S (Learn This One)

If you take nothing else from this page, take this.

1. Press Windows + Shift + S.
2. The screen dims and a small toolbar appears at the top.
3. Drag a box around what you want. Release.

The toolbar gives you four modes, left to right:

Where it goes — and the Windows 11 vs 10 difference

This is the bit that causes the most confusion, so plainly:

• Windows 11: copied to your clipboard and saved as a file in Pictures → Screenshots. You get both.
• Windows 10: copied to the clipboard only. No file is saved. If you don't paste it somewhere, it's gone when you copy anything else.

That difference is responsible for an enormous amount of frustration among people who upgraded and found their screenshots suddenly appearing as files, or downgraded and found them vanishing.

A notification appears after each capture — click it to open the shot in Snipping Tool, where you can crop, annotate and save it properly.

Methods 2–7, and When Each One Actually Helps

2. Win + PrtScn — whole screen, straight to a file

The screen flashes briefly and a PNG lands in Pictures → Screenshots, named Screenshot (1).png and counting up.

Best for: capturing several things quickly without stopping to paste each one. It's the fastest method when you need five shots in a row.

3. PrtScn on its own — the one that catches everybody

Copies the whole screen to the clipboard only. No file is saved anywhere.

This is the single biggest source of "where did my screenshot go?" You must paste it somewhere — Ctrl+V into Paint, Word, an email, a chat window — before you copy anything else, or it's lost.

On Windows 11, plain PrtScn now opens the snipping overlay instead by default, which is a genuine improvement. If you'd rather have the old behaviour back: Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard and turn off the Print Screen option.

4. Alt + PrtScn — the active window only

Click the window you want first, then Alt+PrtScn. Copies just that window to the clipboard.

Best for: sending an error dialog to support without also sending your desktop. This is the one Jake needed for the payment portal.

5. Snipping Tool with a delay — for menus that vanish

Some things disappear the moment you click elsewhere: right-click menus, dropdowns, tooltips, hover states. No shortcut can catch them, because triggering the shortcut closes them.

1. Open Snipping Tool from the Start menu.
2. Set the delay — 3, 5 or 10 seconds.
3. Click New, then go and open the menu you want.
4. When the timer runs out, the screen dims and you capture as normal — menu still open.

Genuinely one of the most useful features in Windows, and one almost nobody knows exists.

6. Win + Alt + PrtScn — games and full-screen apps

The regular shortcuts often fail in full-screen games, capturing black. This one uses the Game Bar and works where the others don't. Files go to Videos → Captures — a different folder, which is why people can't find them.

Press Win+G for the full Game Bar, which also records video.

7. Tablets and 2-in-1s with no keyboard

Press Power + Volume Down together, exactly as on a phone. The screen dims briefly and the file saves to Pictures → Screenshots.

Where Every Method Saves — One Table

Most guides list the shortcuts and stop. This is the follow-up question everybody has:

Can't find the Screenshots folder?

Open File Explorer and paste this into the address bar:

%USERPROFILE%\Pictures\Screenshots

If it isn't there, OneDrive may have moved your Pictures folder into the cloud — check OneDrive → Pictures → Screenshots. And if files seem to be missing entirely, they may simply be hidden; our guide to showing hidden files in Windows covers that.

When Print Screen Does Absolutely Nothing

This is why most people end up reading a page like this. Three causes, in the order they're likely.

Cause 1 — another app has hijacked the key

By far the most common, and almost never mentioned.

OneDrive, Dropbox, Snagit, ShareX, Greenshot and several others offer to "handle screenshots for you". If you ever clicked yes — possibly years ago — they intercept PrtScn before Windows sees it. Your screenshots aren't failing; they're being filed somewhere you're not looking.

Check OneDrive → Settings → Backup for a "Save screenshots I capture to OneDrive" option. Dropbox has an equivalent under Import. Turn it off, or look in that app's folder — your missing screenshots are probably sitting there.

Cause 2 — you need to hold Fn (laptops)

Most laptops share the function row between two jobs: F1–F12, and media controls like brightness and volume. Which set is active depends on F-Lock.

Try Fn + PrtScn. If that works, the fix is either to press Fn+Esc to toggle F-Lock, or to change the default in your BIOS — often listed as "Action Keys Mode" or "Function Key Behavior".

On compact keyboards PrtScn may be printed in small text on another key, sometimes labelled PrtSc, PrntScrn or Insert.

Cause 3 — Windows 11 remapped it deliberately

On current Windows 11, PrtScn opens the snipping overlay rather than copying the whole screen. That's intended behaviour, not a fault. If you want the classic behaviour: Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard, and turn off the Print Screen button setting.

Still nothing?

Use Win+Shift+S, which doesn't involve the Print Screen key at all. If that fails too, the Snipping Tool app itself may be broken — Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Snipping Tool → Advanced options → Repair, then Reset if Repair doesn't do it.

Capturing a Whole Web Page (Scrolling Screenshots)

Honest answer first: Windows has no built-in scrolling capture. Nothing in the box does it. Guides claiming otherwise are describing third-party tools.

But your browser can, free, with no installation:

Chrome and Edge

1. Press F12 to open Developer Tools. (Don't worry — you're not changing anything.)
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+P. A command box appears.
3. Type screenshot and choose Capture full size screenshot.

The entire page, top to bottom, downloads as a PNG.

Firefox

Easier — right-click anywhere on the page, choose Take Screenshot, then Save full page.

After the Capture: Annotating and Sharing Safely

Snipping Tool has a pen, highlighter, shapes and a ruler built in. Enough for "the error is here" without installing anything.

Windows 11's version also does text extraction — capture a screenshot containing text and it can copy that text out as characters you can paste. Genuinely useful for serial numbers and error codes you'd otherwise retype by hand.

Two Monitors, Three Monitors, and a Laptop Plugged Into a TV

Jake added a second screen to the counter so he could keep the stock system open beside the billing software. His screenshots immediately got strange.

Here's what each method does when you have more than one display:

Capturing one monitor only

There's no shortcut for "just monitor 2". Two workarounds:

• Maximise the window you want on that screen, then Alt+PrtScn.
• Use Win+Shift+S in Fullscreen mode and drag across just that display's area.

When monitors have different resolutions or scaling

This is the one that produces genuinely odd results. If your laptop screen runs at 150% scaling and the external monitor at 100%, a full-screen capture stitches them together at mismatched sizes — one half looks stretched, the other cramped, and there may be black bars filling the gap where one screen is shorter.

Nothing is broken. Windows is compositing two different coordinate spaces into one image. The fix is simply to capture one window or one region rather than everything.

Things Windows Will Not Let You Screenshot

Some captures fail no matter which method you use, and it is worth knowing which — because people spend a long time assuming they've done something wrong.

UAC prompts (the "Do you want to allow this app?" box)

When that dark prompt appears, Windows switches to the secure desktop — an isolated session where no ordinary program, including screenshot tools, can see or interact with anything. That's a deliberate defence against malware faking a consent dialog.

So you cannot screenshot a UAC prompt normally. If you genuinely need one for documentation, you can disable the secure desktop temporarily via Local Security Policy — secpol.msc → Local Policies → Security Options → "User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation". Turn it back on afterwards. It exists for a good reason, and our guide to how UAC works explains what you'd be giving up.

The lock screen and sign-in screen

Same principle — you aren't signed in yet, so nothing of yours is running. There's no way to capture it from the machine itself. Photograph it with a phone, or find the wallpaper file directly under %WINDIR%\Web\Screen.

Netflix, Prime Video and other protected content

Your screenshot comes out black. That's not a bug either — it's DRM, working exactly as designed. Protected video paths deliberately refuse to render into a capture buffer. No setting or tool changes this, and anything claiming to is best avoided.

Some banking apps and secure viewers

A growing number of banking and document apps mark their windows as capture-protected. You'll get a black rectangle where the app should be. Intended behaviour, and there is no way around it that you should be pursuing.

Remote Desktop and Virtual Machines

The confusion here is always the same: which computer is taking the picture?

Remote Desktop (RDP)

• Press PrtScn while the remote window is focused → captures the remote machine's screen, saved on the remote machine.
• Press Ctrl+Alt++ (plus) → the RDP equivalent of Alt+PrtScn, capturing the active remote window.
• Minimise the remote window first, or use Win+Shift+S on your own machine → captures locally, including the RDP window as it appears.

Clipboard sharing is usually on by default, so a screenshot copied on the remote machine can often be pasted on your local one. If that isn't working, check the RDP connection's Local Resources tab.

Virtual machines — VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V

The VM grabs your keyboard while focused, so PrtScn goes to the guest operating system, not the host. Two options:

• Capture inside the VM using that OS's own method, then move the file out via a shared folder.
• Capture from the host — release the keyboard first (in VirtualBox that's the Host key, Right Ctrl by default), then use Win+Shift+S normally.

Both VirtualBox and VMware also have their own screenshot function in the menu bar, which is the tidiest route for documentation because it captures the guest display exactly, with no window borders.

Hiding Sensitive Information Properly

This section exists because the obvious way to hide something in a screenshot is not always the safe way, and the difference has caught out people far more careful than Jake.

Blur and pixelation are not reliable

Blurring an account number looks safe. But blur is a mathematical transformation of the original pixels, and for short, predictable strings — card numbers, phone numbers, dates, postcodes — it is sometimes possible to work backwards, because there are only so many possibilities to test against the blurred result.

Light pixelation is worse still. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated recovery of pixelated text, and there have been real cases where pixelated details were reversed.

Crop, don't cover, where you can

Better than any redaction: don't capture it in the first place. Use Win+Shift+S and draw the box around only the part you need. Nothing you never captured can leak.

The checklist before you send

1. Browser tabs — titles reveal a surprising amount
2. Notification popups in the corner
3. The taskbar and system tray
4. Bookmarks bar
5. Account names, email addresses, profile pictures
6. Anything visible in a background window
7. The clock and date, if timing matters to you

For a shop like Jake's, holding customer records, this is not paranoia — under India's DPDP Act, GDPR and comparable laws elsewhere, an accidental disclosure in a support email is still a disclosure.

Third-Party Tools: Worth It, or Not?

Straight answer: for most people, no. Snipping Tool covers it. But three situations genuinely justify installing something.

The honest test: if you take fewer than about ten screenshots a week, installing any of these will cost you more time in setup than it saves. Ethan's rule — "install it when the built-in tool has annoyed you three times, not before."

One caution, given how this article started: download these from their official sites by typing the address, not from a search result. Screenshot utilities are a well-known category for repackaged installers carrying extras.

Keeping Screenshots Findable

After six months, Screenshot (247).png tells you nothing. Three habits that cost nothing:

• Rename immediately, while you still know what it was. F2 on the file. "supplier-portal-error-2026-03.png" beats any numbering scheme.
• Change where they save. Right-click the Screenshots folder → Properties → Location → Move. Useful if your Pictures folder syncs to a cloud account you'd rather not fill with error messages.
• Clear it out periodically. Screenshots accumulate fast, and each one is a few megabytes. If your drive is filling, Storage Sense can clear old ones automatically, and checking your drive space takes seconds.

Sending them without clogging up email

A full-screen PNG on a 4K monitor can exceed 5 MB, and several will bounce off an attachment limit. Options, in order of preference:

1. Crop first. Usually takes a 5 MB capture under 200 KB, and makes the screenshot clearer at the same time.
2. Save as JPEG from Snipping Tool if size still matters. Text softens slightly.
3. Share a cloud link for anything large or for several at once.

For the Power User: Automating Screenshots

If you scrolled this far, you probably want something the built-in tools don't do — captures on a schedule, for monitoring a display or documenting an overnight process.

PowerShell can do it without any software:

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms,System.Drawing
$b = [System.Windows.Forms.Screen]::PrimaryScreen.Bounds
$bmp = New-Object System.Drawing.Bitmap $b.Width, $b.Height
$g = [System.Drawing.Graphics]::FromImage($bmp)
$g.CopyFromScreen($b.Location, [System.Drawing.Point]::Empty, $b.Size)
$name = "$env:USERPROFILE\Pictures\Screenshots\auto-$(Get-Date -f yyyyMMdd-HHmmss).png"
$bmp.Save($name)
$g.Dispose(); $bmp.Dispose()

Save that as capture.ps1, then use Task Scheduler to run it on whatever interval you need. New to PowerShell? Our PowerShell commands for beginners guide starts from zero, and you may need to run it as administrator depending on where you save to.

One caveat worth stating: automated screen capture on a machine other people use is monitoring, and in many workplaces and jurisdictions that carries legal obligations around notice and consent. On your own machine, fine. On staff machines, check before you deploy it.

Questions You're Probably About to Ask

What is the shortcut to take a screenshot on Windows 11?

Windows+Shift+S. Drag a box around any part of the screen. Works identically on Windows 10, and on Windows 11 it also saves a file to Pictures → Screenshots.

Where do Windows screenshots get saved?

Depends on the method — see the table above. Short version: Win+PrtScn saves to Pictures → Screenshots; plain PrtScn saves nowhere and only copies to the clipboard; Game Bar captures go to Videos → Captures.

Why is my Print Screen key not working?

Usually another app (OneDrive, Dropbox, a screenshot tool) has claimed it; or your laptop needs Fn held because F-Lock is off; or Windows 11 has remapped it to the snipping overlay. All three are covered above.

How do I screenshot just one window?

Click the window, then Alt+PrtScn. Or use Win+Shift+S and pick Window Snip, which also saves a file.

What happened to Snip & Sketch?

Merged back into Snipping Tool. On Windows 11 there's one app doing everything both used to, including screen recording. On Windows 10 you may still see both listed — which is why guides written at different times contradict each other.

How do I screenshot on a laptop with no Print Screen key?

Win+Shift+S needs no Print Screen key at all. You can also open Snipping Tool from Start, or on a tablet press Power + Volume Down.

Can Windows take a scrolling screenshot?

Not natively. Use your browser: F12 → Ctrl+Shift+P → type screenshot → Capture full size screenshot in Chrome or Edge. Firefox has it in the right-click menu.

Is screenshotting on Windows 10 different from Windows 11?

Every shortcut works on both. Two differences: Windows 11's Snipping Tool records video and extracts text, and Win+Shift+S saves a file on Windows 11 but only copies to the clipboard on Windows 10. Worth knowing if you're still on Windows 10 — it reached end of support on 14 October 2025, so it won't gain these features.

How do I take a screenshot of just the mouse cursor's position?

Screenshots don't include the cursor by default. To capture it, use Snipping Tool's screen recording, or the Game Bar — both record the pointer.

My screenshots are blurry or huge. Can I change the format?

Windows saves PNG, which is lossless and correct for screenshots — blurriness almost always comes from resizing afterwards, or from the app you pasted into re-compressing it. If file size is the problem, save as JPEG from Snipping Tool, but expect text to soften slightly.

Why is my screenshot black when I capture a game or video?

Two different causes. For games, hardware acceleration draws content in a way normal capture can't see — use Win+Alt+PrtScn (Game Bar), or turn off hardware acceleration in that app. For Netflix, Prime Video and similar, it's DRM deliberately blocking capture, and nothing will change that.

How do I screenshot a UAC prompt?

Normally you can't. UAC prompts appear on Windows' secure desktop, isolated from ordinary programs including screenshot tools — a deliberate defence against malware faking a consent box. You can temporarily disable the secure desktop in secpol.msc if you need one for documentation, but turn it back on afterwards.

How do I capture just one of my two monitors?

There's no dedicated shortcut. Either maximise the window on that screen and use Alt+PrtScn, or use Win+Shift+S and drag across that display's area. Plain PrtScn joins all screens into one wide image.

Is blurring safe for hiding account numbers?

No — use a solid black box instead. Blur and pixelation transform the original pixels rather than destroying them, and for short predictable strings like card or phone numbers, recovery is sometimes possible. Solid opaque colour leaves nothing underneath. Save and reopen the file to confirm the box is baked in.

How do I take a screenshot in Remote Desktop?

Ctrl+Alt++ (plus) captures the active remote window and is RDP's equivalent of Alt+PrtScn. Pressing PrtScn with the remote window focused captures the remote machine. To capture locally instead, use Win+Shift+S on your own desktop.

Do I need ShareX, Greenshot or Snagit?

Probably not. Snipping Tool covers most needs. Install one when the built-in tool has genuinely annoyed you three times — typically if you take dozens of screenshots daily, or need scrolling capture and auto-upload. Download from official sites by typing the address; this category attracts repackaged installers.

Can I change where screenshots are saved?

Yes. Right-click the Screenshots folder → Properties → Location → Move, and pick a new folder. Useful if Pictures syncs to a cloud account you'd rather not fill with error messages.

My screenshot file is too big to email

Crop it first — that usually takes a 5 MB capture under 200 KB and makes it clearer at the same time. If it's still large, save as JPEG from Snipping Tool, or share a cloud link.

Coming Up Next

Jake's next problem was the shop PC taking four minutes to reach the desktop — which is its own guide: how to speed up Windows 11 and 10, including the startup programs nobody ever looks at.

The rest of our Windows Basics series is written the same way: nothing assumed, every term explained, and we tell you when the popular advice is wrong.

Related Guides

Originally published November 2021. Rewritten and re-tested in 2026 for Windows 11 24H2, including the Print Screen behaviour change and the Snipping Tool / Snip & Sketch merge.