How to screenshot on Windows 11
Windows 11 changed what the Print Screen key does and rebuilt the Snipping Tool around it. If a guide written for Windows 10 isn't matching what you see, this is why.
The short answer
- PrtScOpens the capture overlay (new in 11)
- Win + Shift + SSame overlay, works on any version
- Win + PrtScStraight to Pictures › Screenshots
The Print Screen key now opens an overlay#
On Windows 10, tapping Print Screen silently copied the whole screen. On Windows 11 it dims the screen and gives you the capture toolbar instead — the same one Win+Shift+S produces.
This is better for most people, since you no longer capture a full screen just to crop 5% of it. If you preferred the old silent copy, turn the new behaviour off in Settings › Accessibility › Keyboard, under the Print Screen toggle.
Three things the rebuilt Snipping Tool added#
Screen recording. Click the camcorder icon in the toolbar, drag a region, press Start. It writes an MP4 to Videos › Screen Recordings. This closed the last real gap that made third-party tools necessary for quick demos.
Text extraction. Open a capture in the Snipping Tool and press Ctrl+Shift+T, or click the text actions icon. It reads the text in the image and lets you copy it. It also has a redact option that blanks out email addresses and phone numbers it recognises, which is genuinely useful before posting a screenshot publicly. More on pulling text out of images.
A colour picker. Minor, but it saves installing an eyedropper utility.
Every Windows 11 method#
| Keys | Result |
|---|---|
| PrtSc | Capture overlay, unless you've turned that off |
| Win + Shift + S | Capture overlay, always |
| Win + PrtSc | Full screen saved as a file, no overlay |
| Alt + PrtSc | Active window to clipboard |
| Win + Alt + R | Game Bar screen recording |
| Win + Shift + R | Snipping Tool recording, on recent builds |
Turning on the snipping sound and auto-save#
Open the Snipping Tool, click the three dots, then Settings. Two options worth changing straight away:
- Automatically save original screenshots. Off by default in some builds, which means a capture you don't manually save exists only on the clipboard. Turning it on writes every capture to Pictures › Screenshots as well.
- Play shutter sound. Purely so you know it worked. Removes a lot of second-guessing.
Snap layouts change what "the active window" means#
Windows 11's snapped window groups confuse Alt+PrtSc. With two apps snapped side by side, it captures only the focused one, cropped to its half of the screen — often not what you wanted. Use Win+PrtSc for the whole arrangement, or the overlay's window mode to pick deliberately.
If your machine is older than this, the Windows 10 behaviour differs in one important way, and the Windows overview compares all six methods side by side.
Capturing part of the screen in Windows 11
Press Win + Shift + S
The screen dims and a small toolbar appears at the top centre. Print Screen on its own does the same thing on Windows 11.
Choose a capture mode
Rectangle is selected by default. The other icons give you freeform, current window, and entire screen.
Drag across what you want
Release the mouse and the screen returns to normal. The image is now on your clipboard.
Paste it, or click the notification
Ctrl+V drops it into any app. Clicking the notification in the bottom-right corner opens it in the Snipping Tool for cropping, annotation and saving.
Save with Ctrl + S
Choose PNG to keep it sharp, or JPG if you need a smaller file for email.
Questions people actually ask
Why does Print Screen behave differently on my Windows 11 than my colleague's?
The overlay behaviour arrived in a 2023 update and respects whatever the toggle in Settings › Accessibility › Keyboard is set to. Machines upgraded from Windows 10 sometimes keep the old setting, so two machines on the same build can genuinely differ.
Does Windows 11 have a scrolling screenshot?
Not built in, no. The Snipping Tool captures only what's visible. Ways to capture a full page anyway.
Where do Windows 11 screen recordings go?
Snipping Tool recordings go to Videos › Screen Recordings. Game Bar recordings go to Videos › Captures. They're separate features with separate folders.