How to screenshot a Zoom or Teams call

Ordinary screenshot shortcuts work in every video call app. The more useful question is whether anyone finds out, and whether you should.

Updated 14 September 2026

The shortcuts just work#

Video calls render like any other window, so nothing special is needed:

• Windows — Win+Shift+S for a region, Alt+PrtSc for the call window alone
• Mac — Cmd+Shift+4, or Cmd+Shift+4 then Space to click the window
• Chromebook — Ctrl+Shift+Show windows

Alt+PrtSc and the Mac window mode are the neat options here, because they crop to the call window and exclude your desktop, your other tabs and any notification that happens to arrive. Window capture on Windows

Does anyone get told?#

Zoom notifies participants when someone starts recording, with an on-screen banner and often an audio announcement. Screenshots are not recording, and no notification is sent.

Microsoft Teams does the same: recording is announced to everyone, screenshots are not.

Google Meet announces recording. No screenshot notification.

So in every major platform, a screenshot is silent. There's no technical control over it, and there isn't likely to be — the capture happens in the operating system, not in the app.

Which makes it a judgement question#

Since nobody will stop you, the constraint is yours. A few things worth weighing:

• People's faces are personal data in many jurisdictions, and a call screenshot contains several. Sharing one outside the call is a different act from taking it.
• In some places, recording a conversation requires consent from everyone in it. Whether a still image counts varies, and it isn't a settled question everywhere.
• Workplace policies frequently cover this even where the law doesn't, particularly for calls involving customers, candidates or patients.
• Shared screens often contain more than intended — an open inbox behind a slide deck, a filename, a notification. Capturing someone's shared screen can capture things they didn't mean to show.

Saying "I'm going to grab a screenshot of this slide" takes three seconds and removes the whole question. For anything beyond your own reference, ask.

Practical tips#

Capturing a whiteboard or shared slide. Wait for the presenter to finish drawing, ask them to hide their camera thumbnail if it covers content, and capture the window rather than the full screen.

Speaker view versus gallery view. Switch before capturing rather than cropping afterwards. Zoom's gallery view at a small window size produces unusably small faces.

Hiding your own video. Both Zoom and Teams let you hide your self-view without turning off your camera, which gives a cleaner capture.

Black rectangles. If a shared screen comes out black, the presenter is sharing protected video. The capture isn't failing; the content is protected. Why the capture comes out black

Better than a screenshot: most platforms let the presenter export or share slides directly, and Teams and Zoom whiteboards can usually be exported as images by the owner. Asking produces a much better file than any capture.