How to screenshot on a Windows laptop

Windows has six separate capture methods that have accumulated over twenty years. You only need two of them. Here is which two, and why the others still exist.

Updated 15 September 2026

Start with Win + Shift + S#

This is the one to learn. The screen dims, the cursor becomes a crosshair, and you drag a rectangle around whatever you want. A toolbar at the top also lets you switch to window capture, full screen, or freeform — a lasso you draw by hand.

The image goes to your clipboard, so you can paste it straight into Teams, Word, Gmail or a chat box with Ctrl+V — though Word and Excel each handle a pasted image differently. A notification appears in the bottom-right; click it to open the capture in the Snipping Tool, where you can crop, annotate and save. Ignore the notification and the image stays on the clipboard until you copy something else.

The reason to prefer it over Print Screen: you get to choose the region before capturing, so you rarely need to crop afterwards. Full guide to Win + Shift + S.

Use Win + PrtSc when you want a file immediately#

Hold the Windows key and tap Print Screen. The screen flashes briefly and a PNG appears in Pictures › Screenshots, numbered sequentially. Nothing opens, nothing asks you where to put it.

For documenting a process it is the right choice, because you can fire off fifteen captures in a row and deal with them later. It's the wrong method if you only want part of the screen, because you'll be cropping every one of them.

The other four methods#

PrtSc on its own. On Windows 10 this copies the whole screen to the clipboard with no file and no visual feedback, which is why people press it repeatedly and assume it's broken. On Windows 11 the same key now opens the Snipping Tool overlay by default, so the behaviour you get depends on your version. The differences, version by version.

Alt + PrtSc. Captures only the window in front, cropped exactly to its edges. Useful for support tickets, where the rest of your desktop is nobody's business. When to use it.

The Snipping Tool app. The same capture engine with a window around it, plus a delay timer for catching menus that vanish when they lose focus, and basic annotation. What it can do.

Game Bar, Win+G. Built for games but works anywhere. It's the only built-in option that records video as well as stills, and it saves to Videos › Captures rather than Pictures. What it can and can't capture.

If none of them respond#

Work through these in order — the first two account for most cases:

• Print Screen key does nothing at all
• Screenshots that never appear in the folder
• Snipping Tool won't open or crashes
• Your laptop has no Print Screen key

Going beyond one screen#

Windows can't capture a page that's longer than your display, which is the single biggest gap in its built-in tools. Ways around that.