Capturing a screen is useful for many things. In smartphones, there is a key combination to press and a snapshot of your screen is saved into your memory. But how to take a screenshot of your PC screen? Well, you might already know about the “print screen “ key on your keyboard, but in windows 10 there are some other ways to capture a screen on pc. In this article, we hope to discuss how to screenshot on windows 10.
Screenshot on Windows 10 using print screen key.
THE “PRINT SCREEN” key is a dedicated key to capture screenshots in windows. This key is available on almost every keyboard and works with any windows version, even with the older versions like Windows XP and the latest ones like windows 10. If you cannot find this key on your keyboard this is where you should look.
Desktop users: you should look in the function keys row (look above 6 keys set DELETE, PAGE UP, PAGE DOWN), after F12 key you should see three separate keys, in there you should see the “PRINT SCREEN” or “PrtScn” key.
Laptop users: Normally laptop keyboards do not come with a dedicated “PRINT SCREEN” key, this key is joined with another key as a secondary function. Usually, you can find this key on the top row of the keyboard where the function keys are. You will see the word “PRINT SCREEN” “PrtScn” in one of these keys. To press this key you can press and hold the “Fn” key on your keyboard then press the “PrtScn” key.
Pressing the print screen key does not save your screenshot as a document. It just simply copies the screenshot to the clipboard. You should paste the screenshot to another document to save it.
Saving the screenshot in MS paint
- Open paint
- Go to the “Select” tool and click on it.
- Right-click on the canvas area and click on “Paste”
- Save the document.
Saving a screenshot in MS word
- Open MS Word.
- Click on the document.
- Press “Ctrl + V”
However, you can do more with the “PrTScn” key by pressing these key combinations.
ALT+ PRTSCN: This takes a screenshot of the active window only. By simply just pressing PrtScn you take a screenshot of the whole screen. If you have multiple windows open it captures all. But by pressing these two key combinations you can capture just the active screen.
Windows key + PrtScn: This saves a screen capture of the entire screen as an image file in your Pictures folder. You can find these screenshots under the subfolder “screenshot”.
How to Screenshot on Windows 10 – Latest update
In the windows latest update, they have included a new shortcut to take screenshots quickly. Simply press Windows key + Shift + S to go to screenshot mode. Now you will see some buttons on the top of the screen. You can select which mode you want to capture the screen by selecting each button. After capturing the screenshot you will get a notification saying that the screenshot is taken. You can save the screenshot by clicking on that notification or by copying the screenshot to another document.
How to screenshot on Windows 10 using the snipping tool.
Snipping tool is a small software in windows 10 which allows you to take screenshots. This app gives you many options to take screenshots and do a lot more with those screenshots. You can launch this app by going to the Start menu and searching for the snapping tool
To get a screenshot using the snipping tool,
- Run snapping tool.
- Now from MODE, you can select the mode you want, this specifies which type of screenshot you need to take.
Free form snip: you can select a random area to take the screenshot. you can draw around the area you want to capture and that area only will be captured.
Rectangular snip: you can select the area you want to screenshot by drawing a rectangular.
Windows snip: when multiple windows are open, you can select a specific window to capture.
Full-screen snip: you can capture the whole screen as it is.
- After selecting mode, click on “New”
- You can capture the screenshot and it will be shown in the editor. You can edit it the way you like and save it.
Options in Snapping tool
The snapping tool gives you a variety of options to capture the screenshot and edit it. As we mentioned before the “ mode “ option is such an option. Here are some other options.
Delay: This option gives you the ability to delay the screenshot by a couple of seconds, this function acts like a timer in your mobile phone camera app. This is useful when you want to capture a thing like a tooltip from a button.
Pen, highlighter, and eraser: these tools are shown after you captured the screenshot. You can draw or highlight areas you need with these tools.
Edit with paint 3D: you can edit the image from paint 3D by this option.
How to screenshot on windows 10 using the game bar.
The game bar is an overlay app that can be used to take screenshots when you are playing a computer game. This also allows you to record screen video. Follow the steps to take a screen capture while playing a game.
1 start the game from the start menu, or via console companion program
- to open the game bar overlay, press the Windows key + G.
- you should see a small camera icon on this overlay. Click on that icon to take the screenshot.
- Also, you can use the key combination Windows key + PRTSCN + ALT to capture the screen.
These screen captures are saved in your computer automatically, to find these screen captures go to videos -> Captures folder.
Capturing screenshots of a game on STEAM
If you are playing games in STEAM you can capture screenshots of the game by pressing F11. You can find these screenshots in the Screenshots folder in the STEAM installation folder.