How to to take a screenshot on windows 10?

Taking screenshots of important documents, like plane tickets or receipts for online purchases, is a good way to make sure you have access to your documents in case ticket apps or your email aren't working. Whether you have Windows 10 or Windows 11, there are a few easy ways to take screenshots of all (or part) of your screen.

While Microsoft no longer sells Windows 10, the software giant will still support the operating system until October 2025. That means you don't have to switch to Windows 11 just yet, and you can still use these screenshot tips for the next couple years.

Here's how to use built-in tools and other shortcuts for taking screenshots in Windows 10 and Windows 11, so you can decide which you like best.

The Snip & Sketch tool is easier to access, share and annotate screenshots than the old Snipping Tool. It can now capture a screenshot of a window on your desktop, a surprising omission when the app was first introduced that kept us on Team Snipping Tool until recently.

The easiest way to call up Snip & Sketch is with the keyboard shortcut Windows key + Shift + S. You can also find the Snip & Sketch tool listed in the alphabetical list of apps accessed from the Start button as well as in the notification panel where it's listed as Screen snip. Or you can just search for it if you don't commit the keyboard shortcut to memory. (If you're a frequent screenshot taker, we recommend pinning the app to the taskbar.)

Either the keyboard shortcut or the notification button will dim your screen and open a tiny menu at the top of your screen that lets you choose which type of screenshot you want to take: rectangular, freeform, window or full-screen. Once you take your screenshot, it will be saved to your clipboard and show up momentarily as a notification in the lower-right corner of your screen. Click the notification to open the screenshot in the Snip & Sketch app to annotate, save or share it. (If you miss the notification, open the notification panel and you'll see it sitting there.)

If you open Snip & Sketch from the Start menu or by searching for it, it will open the Snip & Sketch window instead of the small panel at the top of the screen. From here, you need to click the New button in the upper left to initiate a screen capture and open the small panel. It's an extra step to proceed this way, but it also lets you delay a screenshot. Click the down-arrow button next to the New button to delay a snip for 3 or 10 seconds.

The Snipping Tool has been around since Windows Vista. Windows has warned for a couple years that the Snipping Tool is going away, but it's still kicking around in Windows 11. The Snipping Tool has been delisted from the list of apps in the Start menu, but you can still easily access it via the search bar.

Click the New button to begin the screenshot process. The default snip type is rectangular, but you can also take free-form, full-screen and window snips.

Snipping Tool does not automatically save your screenshots -- you will need to manually save them in the tool before you exit -- and it does automatically copy your captures to the clipboard.

To capture your entire screen, tap the Print Screen (sometimes labeled PrtScn) key. Your screenshot won't be saved as a file, but it will be copied to the clipboard. You'll need to open an image editing tool (such as Microsoft Paint), paste the screenshot into the editor and save the file from there.

You can also set the PrtScn button to open the Snip & Sketch tool by going to Settings > Ease of Access > Keyboard and toggling on Use the PrtScn button to open screen snipping under Print Screen Shortcut.

To capture your entire screen and automatically save the screenshot, tap the Windows key + Print Screen key. Your screen will briefly go dim to indicate you've just taken a screenshot, and the screenshot will be saved to the Pictures > Screenshots folder.

To take a quick screenshot of the active window, use the keyboard shortcut Alt + PrtScn. This will snap your currently active window and copy the screenshot to the clipboard. You'll need to open the shot in an image editor to save it.

If your computer doesn't have the PrtScn key, no worries, Microsoft has another keyboard shortcut for you. You can press Fn + Windows logo key + Space Bar to take a screenshot. It will then be saved to the Pictures > Screenshots folder.

You can use the Game bar to snap a screenshot, whether you're in the middle of playing a game or not. First, you'll need to enable the Game bar from the settings page by making sure you've toggled on Record game clips, screenshots and broadcasts using Game bar. Once enabled, hit the Windows key + G key to call up the Game bar. From here, you can click the screenshot button in the Game bar or use the default keyboard shortcut Windows key + Alt + PrtScn to snap a full-screen screenshot. To set your own Game bar screenshot keyboard shortcut, to Settings > Gaming > Game bar.

If you're rocking a Microsoft Surface device, you can use the physical (well, sort of physical) buttons to take a screenshot of your entire screen -- similar to how you would take a screenshot on any other phone or tablet. To do this, hold down the Windows Logo touch button at the bottom of your Surface screen and hit the physical volume-down button on the side of the tablet. The screen will dim briefly and the screenshot will be automatically saved to the Pictures > Screenshots folder.

Want more Windows info? Check out CNET's Windows 11 review and every difference between Windows 10 and Windows 11. You can also check out what Microsoft 365 Basic offers.

Press Ctrl + PrtScn keys. The entire screen changes to gray including the open menu. Select Mode, or in earlier versions of Windows, select the arrow next to the New button. Select the kind of snip you want, and then select the area of the screen capture that you want to capture.

It’s astonishing how long it has taken to perfect this simple capability. Windows has had screen-printing capabilities since the first PCs in the 1980s (their text-based option differed from today’s raster screenshots). Windows 10 introduced new ways to take screenshots, like using the Snip & Sketch utility, and taking screenshots in Windows 11 is even smarter with its version of the Snipping Tool.

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.

After many years of using Snagit (see below), this has become my primary screenshot method: Press the keyboard combo Shift-Windows Key-S, and you have a choice of capturing the full screen, a rectangular selection, a freehand selection, or an individual program window. An alternative way to invoke Snip & Sketch is via the Action Center's Screen Snip button.

After using this keyboard shortcut, you momentarily see a small thumbnail panel notification at the lower right that says Snip Saved to Clipboard. Tap this to open the Snip & Sketch window. In this, you can crop the image and mark it up with a pen, pencil, highlighter, eraser, ruler. Then you can save the image to a folder of your choice, or share it using the standard Windows Share menu. That lets you send it to Instagram, Messenger, Mail, or any other app that accepts the file type. It also lets you send it to a nearby PC with Nearby Sharing enabled.

A couple things I wish Snip & Sketch had are text overlay and basic shapes, including the ever-useful arrow. If you only want to use this tool, you can go into Windows’ Settings app and choose Ease of Access > Keyboard and choose Use the PrtSc Button to Open Screen Snipping. Note that this requires restarting Windows.

This is the longtime classic method of screenshotting in Windows 10. It’s especially useful for shooting apps that change appearance when you hit a keyboard combination. Often a menu will collapse as soon as you tap a shift key. Hitting the Print Screen or PrtSc key copies the entire screen to the Clipboard; adding Alt together with Print Screen copies only the active window rectangle.

You do need to take extra steps to open and save your image in an application that deals with images, such as Paint, Paint 3D, or even Photoshop (unless you take advantage of the next tip). Simply paste with Ctrl-V when you’re in a new document in one of those apps, and then you can go to town with editing, and finally, save the image to the folder of your choice.

This is one of the best things ever to hit screenshots in Windows, having arrived in 2015. As with the plain-old Print Screen key, you can save the entire screen or the active window with Print Screen or Alt-Print Screen, respectively. But after you go to OneDrive’s Settings panel and choose Automatically Save Screenshots/Capture to OneDrive from the Backup tab, you’re saved from having to open an image app, paste from the clipboard, and then save the file. Hit Print Screen, and you’ve got an image file saved, all in one step.

Windows’ Action Center (the slide-out panel on the right side of the screen) notifies you that your shot was saved, and you can click on the notification to take you right to the folder where it’s saved. If you use this method a lot, you’ll probably want more cloud storage than just the free 5GB. An Office 365 account (starting at $6.99 per month) gets you 1TB, as well as all the famous productivity applications.

This method was introduced with Windows 8, but it still works in Windows 10. It’s simpler than some of the other methods in this story. On tablets like the Surface Pro, you invoke this functionality by pressing the Volume Down and Power buttons at the same time. This or Windows Key-Print Screen key combo will momentarily darken the screen to show you it worked, and instantly save a PNG image file to your Pictures > Screenshots folder.

Alt-Windows Key-Print Screen saves just the active window, but, interestingly, this uses the Windows Game Bar (see next slide) functionality, saving your screenshot to your Videos/Captures folder. Both of these methods are good if you want instant saving without having to bother with the Clipboard or OneDrive cloud storage.

Windows Key-G opens the Game bar, which includes an icon looking like a webcam. Tap this to open the Capture section, which has a camera icon. Tap that, and your screenshot is saved to the Videos/Captures folder under your main user folder.

Another way to take screenshots is by using a third-party tool. Our favorite screenshot app at PCMag is Snagit. Snagit has at least one major benefit over Windows’ built-in screenshot tools: You can snap away and all your shots remain in the utility’s repository, available at any time you might need them later. It’s the least disruptive way to shoot screens while continuing your work. After you’re ready to deal with the shots, you can browse the history and save the images you want to the folder of your choice.Snagit also includes advanced tools like video and scrolling window screenshot tools. It offers handy image-editing and drawing tools, including brightness, arrows, text overlay, and borders. The downside? A Snagit license will set you back $62.99, but for those who need its advanced functionality, it’s worth the money.

Other good third-party screenshot options include Ashampoo Snap, Droplr, and Screencast-O-Matic. You can read about all of these in our Best Screen-Capture Apps roundup.

If you’re on a digital-inking-capable touch-screen PC like a Surface Pro, you can take a screenshot of your full screen simply by double-clicking on the Back button on a Surface Pen. This opens Snip and Sketch with the full screenshot ready for annotating, editing, and sharing.

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.

If you want to take a screenshot on your Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer, there are several methods you can use.

Whether you want to save the entire screen or just a piece of it, we've rounded up all the best ways to take a Windows screenshot.

The easiest way to take a screenshot of your entire screen on Windows 10 or Windows 11 is by pressing the Print Screen (PrtScn) button on your keyboard.

The screenshot will be copied to your clipboard. To save the file, paste the screenshot into any program that allows you to insert images, like Microsoft Word or Paint.

To take a screenshot on Windows 10 or Windows 11 and automatically save the file to the Screenshots folder, press the Windows key + PrtScn. Your screen will go dim and a screenshot of your entire screen will be saved to the folder.

To only capture the active window you're working in, press Alt + PrtScn. The screenshot will be copied to your clipboard, and you'll need to paste it into another program to save it.

Windows 10 Snip & Sketch is the best way to screenshot on Windows if you're looking to customize, annotate, or share your screen captures.

To activate Snip & Sketch, use the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + Shift + S. Your screen will go dim and a mini menu will appear at the top of your screen, giving you the option to take a rectangular, free-form, window, or full-screen capture.

With these Snip & Skitch options, you can choose how you'd like to take a screenshot:

After you capture the screenshot, it'll be saved to your clipboard and a preview notification will appear in the bottom-right corner of your screen.

Click on the preview notification to open the Snip & Sketch app and save, share, or edit the screenshot with the available drawing tools.

Although the Snipping Tool exists in Windows 10, it's not usually the screenshot tool you'll want to use. In Windows 11, the Snipping Tool got a major upgrade and it's now the best way to take custom screenshots.

To start the Snipping Tool in Windows 11, you can search for it or press the Windows Key + Shift + S. Like Snip & Sketch, your screen will go dim and a toolbar of screenshot options will appear at the top of the screen. This toolbar will let you take a rectangular, freeform, full-window, or a full-screen capture.

Once you've taken your screenshot, it'll be copied to your clipboard so you can share it right away, and it will be saved to the Screenshots folder. If you click the preview that pops up in the bottom-right corner of your screen, you'll be able to save and edit it.

The Game Bar is an overlay you can use within most Windows apps and games to take screenshots and record videos. Follow the steps below to open and use it:

1. Press Windows Key + G.

2. In the overlay menu, click the Capture button – the camera icon – in the top menu to bring up the Capture menu.

3. In the Capture menu, click the camera icon to take a screenshot. You can also record a video clip by pressing the record button, with the option to include audio by clicking the microphone icon.

Screenshots and video clips captured by the Game Bar are saved in PNG and MP4 format and you can find them in the Videos > Captures folder in File Explorer. You can also find them through the Game Bar's Gallery, by clicking Show my captures > See my captures underneath the screenshot and recording buttons in the Capture menu.

To take a screenshot on Windows 10 with a Microsoft Surface device, press the Power Button + Volume Up Button. The screen will go dim, and your screenshot will save to the Pictures > Screenshots folder.

• Method 1. Use the Print Screen key/shortcut.
• Method 2: Alt + Prt Sc (print screen button) screen capture.
• Method 4. Use the Snipping Tool to take a screenshot.
• Method 5. Using the Snip & Sketch app to take a screenshot.
• Method 6. Using the Game Bar to take a screenshot.