How to screenshot just one window

Alt + Print Screen crops to the window's exact edges — a pixel-perfect result you can't match by dragging a box by hand.

Updated 15 September 2026

What it does#

Click the window you want so it's in front, hold Alt, tap PrtSc. That window and nothing else is copied to your clipboard, cropped exactly to its borders.

No file is created. Paste with Ctrl+V.

Why bother, when you could drag a box#

Three reasons it beats Win+Shift+S for this particular job:

• Precision. The crop is exact. Dragging by hand leaves a line of desktop along one edge or shaves a pixel off the title bar, and you won't notice until you look at the result.
• Speed. No dragging, no aiming. Two keys.
• Privacy. Your other windows, your taskbar, your wallpaper and whatever notification just arrived are all excluded automatically. When the capture is destined for a support ticket, that's the difference between showing the bug and showing your whole desktop. It is also the right tool for capturing a video call without showing the rest of your screen.

What counts as "active"#

The window with keyboard focus — usually the one whose title bar is brighter. This causes two predictable failures:

Dialog boxes. Click a dialog to make it active and Alt+PrtSc captures only the dialog, not the window behind it. Sometimes exactly right, sometimes not. If you need both, use Win+Shift+S in window mode and click the parent window instead.

Clicking the desktop first. With no window focused, you get the whole desktop. Click inside the window you want before pressing.

Snapped windows change the result#

On Windows 11, two apps snapped side by side each count as a separate window occupying half the screen. Alt+PrtSc gives you one half. If you meant to show how the two sit together, use Win+PrtSc for the full screen instead. Windows 11 specifics.

Saving straight to a file instead#

Win+Alt+PrtSc captures the active window through Game Bar and writes a PNG to Videos › Captures — not Pictures, which trips people up. It needs Game Bar enabled and won't work on File Explorer or the desktop, since Game Bar treats those as system surfaces rather than apps.

On a laptop, watch the Fn key#

Three-key combinations are where the function row's dual purpose becomes annoying. If Alt+PrtSc does nothing, try Fn+Alt+PrtSc, which means holding two modifiers and tapping a third key with one hand. Enabling Fn Lock removes the need permanently — how to do that.

For the other Windows capture options, including the ones that write a file straight to disk, see the Windows methods in full.