There may be times when you want to capture or save what’s happening on your computer screen or mobile device. Knowing how to take a screenshot—or a picture of the screen—can be useful in many situations including:
- Capturing an error message to show tech support
- Sending a picture of your screen to share information, or save information instead of printing or writing it down
Screenshots are captured using keyboard shortcuts or a screenshot application. A couple of screenshot options are available, depending on how much of the screen you want to capture. You can choose to take a screenshot of the entire screen, the active window, or part of the screen. In this lesson, we'll share how to take screenshots for Windows and macOS computers, as well as for mobile devices.
If you need to review how to perform shortcuts with your keyboard, go to the Keyboard Shortcuts article.
Taking Screenshots in Windows
When taking a screenshot in Windows, you will use the Print Scrn key on your keyboard. The image will copy to the clipboard. Only one image at a time can be copied to the clipboard.
Windows Keyboard Combinations
- Print Scrn: This copies the entire screen onto your clipboard
- Alt + Print Scrn: This copies the active window or dialog box
Once you've taken a screenshot, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V to paste it into applications like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Paint, and Photoshop. You can then edit and save the image.
Windows Screenshot Application: Snipping Tool (formerly Snip & Sketch)
The application Snipping Tool (formerly Snip & Sketch) is automatically on Windows computers. To get to Snipping Tool, you can either type into the search bar, or use the keyboard shortcut: windows key + shift + s. This will bring a toolbar to the top of your screen where you can choose between four selections: a rectangular, freeform, window, or fullscreen snip.
Keyboard Shortcut
Toolbar
Taking Screenshots in MacOS
When taking screenshots in macOS, these keyboard shortcuts will automatically save the picture to your desktop as an image file.
- Shift + Command + 3: This takes a screenshot of the entire screen.
- Shift + Command + 4: The mouse changes into a crosshair icon.
You can choose from two options:
- Click and drag the mouse to take a screenshot of part of the screen
- Press the space bar. The mouse changes into a camera icon. Then click on a window to take a screenshot of that window.
Taking Screenshots on Mobile Devices
- To take a screenshot on an iPhone, all you do is press the home button and the power button at the same time. On newer models that don’t have the home button, press the volume up button and power button simultaneously. This will take a photo of what's on your screen, and the image will save to your camera roll (in the Photos app).
- To take a screenshot on most Android mobile devices, press the volume down button and the power button at the same time. This will take a picture of your screen, and the image will save to your gallery.
