The short answer
Press Win + Shift + S. Drag over the part you want. It goes to your clipboard, ready to paste, and on Windows 11 the Snipping Tool also saves a copy to Pictures\Screenshots.
That is the one to memorise, and it works the same on Windows 11 and Windows 10. Everything below is for when you need something that shortcut does not do.
Windows 11 vs Windows 10: what is different
The shortcuts are identical on both versions. Three things changed in Windows 11, and they explain most "it does not do what the tutorial said" moments:
- Print Screen opens the Snipping Tool. On current Windows 11 builds the Print Screen key opens the same capture bar as Win + Shift + S, instead of silently copying the whole screen. The switch is "Use the Print screen key to open screen capture", under Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard on recent builds (Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard on older ones). Turn it off to get the old copy-the-whole-screen behavior back.
- Snip & Sketch is gone. Windows 11 folded it into the Snipping Tool, which now also records video. On Windows 10 you may see both apps.
- Snipping Tool saves automatically. According to Microsoft's Snipping Tool page, every snip in Windows 11 is also written to
Pictures\Screenshotsby default, so a capture made with Win + Shift + S is no longer clipboard-only. Windows 10 never did this.
If the shortcut does nothing at all, that is a separate problem with its own checklist: see Win + Shift + S not working, Snipping Tool not working and Print Screen not working. Laptop keyboards add their own Fn quirks, covered model by model for Dell, HP and Lenovo.
The five methods
| Shortcut | What it captures | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Win + Shift + S | A region you drag, a window, or the full screen | Clipboard. Windows 11 also saves a file to Pictures\Screenshots |
| Win + Print Screen | The whole screen | Saved as a file, automatically |
| Print Screen alone | Windows 10: the whole screen. Windows 11: opens the capture bar | Windows 10: clipboard only. Windows 11: same as Win + Shift + S, unless you switch it off |
| Alt + Print Screen | Only the window you are focused on | Clipboard only |
| Win + G | Game Bar, for games and full screen apps | Saved to your Videos folder |
Where the file actually is
This is the question behind most searches, and the answer depends on which shortcut you pressed. The full map, including OneDrive and Game Bar detours, is in where screenshots go on Windows.
Win + Print Screen saves a PNG to Pictures\Screenshots inside your user folder. It works the same on Windows 10 and 11.
Win + Shift + S, and Print Screen on Windows 11, copy the capture to the clipboard and the Snipping Tool also saves it to Pictures\Screenshots, as long as "Automatically save screenshots" is on in the Snipping Tool settings (it is by default). On Windows 10, Win + Shift + S is clipboard only: there is no file until you paste it somewhere.
Alt + Print Screen, and plain Print Screen on Windows 10, go to the clipboard only. If you go looking through your folders for those, you will find nothing, and that is not a bug.
Game Bar is the odd one out: it saves to Videos\Captures, not Pictures, because it is built for clips first and stills second.
When Print Screen does nothing
Usually it is doing exactly what it is supposed to and you cannot tell, because the clipboard gives no feedback. Paste into any app that accepts an image and see whether something appears before assuming it is broken.
If it genuinely does nothing, three real causes in order of likelihood:
- Another app owns the key. Screen capture tools, some game launchers and several keyboard utilities take over Print Screen. Close them one at a time and test.
- The key needs a modifier. On many compact and laptop keyboards Print Screen shares a key, and you need Fn to reach it.
- Focus is on something protected. Some banking apps and streaming video deliberately produce a black rectangle instead of an image. Nothing is broken; you are being blocked on purpose.
Capturing a menu that closes when you click
Dropdowns and right click menus vanish the moment you press a snipping shortcut, which makes them almost impossible to capture the normal way.
The way around it: open the menu, then use the Snipping Tool's delay. Open the tool from the Start menu, set a delay of a few seconds, start the capture, then open your menu and wait. The capture fires with the menu still on screen.
The Snipping Tool, which does more than the shortcut
Win + Shift + S is actually the Snipping Tool in disguise: it opens the capture bar without opening the app. Opening the app itself gets you four things the shortcut does not.
- Four capture modes. Rectangle, window, full screen and freeform. Freeform lets you draw an irregular shape, which is the only sane way to capture something round or diagonal.
- A delay. Three, five or ten seconds before the capture fires. This is the only way to catch anything that disappears when you press a key.
- Annotation. Pen, highlighter, ruler and a crop tool, applied before you save.
- Screen recording. On Windows 11 the same app records video, which the shortcut has no equivalent for.
On Windows 11 the Snipping Tool absorbed the old Snip & Sketch. On Windows 10 you may still have both installed, doing nearly the same job with different names. Use whichever opens.
Laptops with no Print Screen key
Compact and laptop keyboards keep dropping the key, or hiding it behind a function layer. Three ways out, in order of how well they work.
- Use Win + Shift + S instead. It does not involve Print Screen at all, which makes the whole problem disappear. This is the real answer.
- Look for a shared key. On many laptops Print Screen sits on top of another key, printed in a second colour, and needs Fn to reach.
- On a tablet or a Surface, press the power button and the volume down button together. The screen dims briefly and the image lands in
Pictures\Screenshots.
Capturing a whole page that scrolls
Windows has no built in way to capture past the bottom of the screen, and this is the single most common thing people expect and do not get. There is no shortcut for it, on any version.
What actually works, in order of effort:
- Your browser already does it. In Chrome and Edge, open developer tools with F12, press Ctrl + Shift + P, type "screenshot" and choose the full size capture. Firefox has it in the right click menu under Take Screenshot.
- Print to PDF. Ctrl + P, choose Microsoft Print to PDF. You get the whole page and the text stays selectable, which a screenshot never does.
- Several screenshots stitched together. Last resort, and the seams always show.
Two monitors, and which one you get
With more than one screen the shortcuts behave differently and it catches people out.
| Shortcut | With two monitors |
|---|---|
| Print Screen | Captures every monitor as one wide image, black bars included if they differ in size |
| Alt + Print Screen | Only the focused window, wherever it is |
| Win + Shift + S | Lets you drag across both, or pick one window |
If you only want one screen, Win + Shift + S with the window mode is the reliable option. Print Screen on a dual setup produces an image most of which you then have to crop away.
Screenshots that come out black
You press the shortcut, you paste, and you get a black rectangle where the content should be. Nothing is broken, and no setting will fix it.
Two causes. Protected content: streaming video and some banking apps deliberately blank themselves in captures, because they are built to stop exactly that. Hardware acceleration: some players and games draw straight to the graphics card, in a layer the screenshot never sees.
For the second one, turning off hardware acceleration in that app's settings usually fixes it. For the first, nothing will, and that is the point of it.
Games and full screen apps
Print Screen often does nothing in a game, because the game has taken exclusive control of the display.
Use Win + Alt + Print Screen, which is the Game Bar's own capture and works where the normal one does not. It saves to Videos\Captures. Switching the game from full screen to borderless windowed also makes the normal shortcuts start working again.
Changing where screenshots are saved
The Pictures\Screenshots folder can be moved, and Windows will follow it. Right click the folder, open Properties, go to the Location tab and choose a new path. Everything Win + Print Screen produces goes there from then on.
Worth doing if you screenshot constantly and want them somewhere that syncs, or somewhere that does not.
Tablets and Surfaces: buttons instead of keys
With no keyboard attached, Windows falls back to the phone gesture: press Power + Volume Down together and the screen flashes, with the file landing in Pictures\Screenshots as usual. On a Surface with the keyboard detached that is the whole story; reattach the keyboard and every shortcut on this page returns. Pen owners have one more route: the pen's tail button can be mapped to screen capture in Settings under Pen and Windows Ink, which opens a snip of the current screen ready to mark up, the closest Windows gets to the capture-then-annotate flow in one press.
What to do with it once you have it
If you only need part of it, cropping a screenshot on Windows covers the four ways to trim it. A raw screenshot pasted into a document or a post looks like it fell there. Padding, rounded corners and a background fix that in about ten seconds, and you can do all three at once with the screenshot beautifier on this site. It runs in the browser, so the image never leaves your machine.
If you need more than the Snipping Tool offers (scrolling capture, step numbers, a capture library), compare the options in Snipping Tool alternatives and the side-by-side Snagit vs Snipping Tool.