Easy Tips on How to Take a Screenshot On Windows OS

“Hahaha this is so funny let’s take a screenshot”

But do you know how to take a screenshot on a laptop? Surprisingly, this is something that not a lot of us know about.

Although the process is a rather simple one, it all depends on your operating software. Here we are going to talk about how to take a screenshot on different versions of Windows. If you did not know, the methods are not the same for windows 10 as it is for Windows XP.

Windows versions before Windows 7 (Vista, black XP, and XP)

In these versions of windows, we had two methods to take the screenshot. Both of these methods have different functions and different keys as well.

Take a Screenshot of the whole screen

To do this the steps are rather simple they are:

Press PrintSc key on your keyboard
Paste using Ctrl + V

Paste by right-clicking on the mouse and clicking on the paste option

Now there are two directions that you can follow after doing this

Paste it on Graphic editing software or picture editing software (even MS Paint) and save the image as a file
Paste the image on a document or a chatting window and proceed

Side Note* If you do not paste the image on an editing software you will not have the copy of the image so it is recommended to save the copy first.

Take a Screenshot of the Working window

The way to take a screenshot of a window that you are working on is not that different from doing the same on the whole screen. The only different thing that is different is one Key.

Press Alt + PrintSc key on your keyboard
Paste using Ctrl + V

Paste by right-clicking on the mouse and clicking on the paste option

After this, you can either paste the image on a photo editing software to save it as a file or use it in a document.

Windows 7

In this version of windows, new software was added to the program list called Snipping tool. The purpose of this snipping tool was to take a screenshot.

All you had to do in this app was:

Open the application from the start menu
Click on new
Highlight the area
Save the image

You have different options on how to take the screenshot as well. These options are:

Freeform – take the screenshot of any shape
Rectangular – take the screenshot of a rectangular shape
Windows – take the screenshot of a certain window
Fullscreen – take the screenshot of a whole screen

Additionally, you can highlight it afterward as well. You can take screenshots with a time lag from 1 to 5 seconds.

Now while this feature was added into the windows, it did not mean that old features were deleted.

Windows 8

After Windows 8 was launched, a new feature was built into the system. It was called the Game Capturing system which is commonly known as Xbox Game Bar.

You can access this setting by pressing Windows + G

Now before you begin to capture or record your screen you need to check if you can capture on the said window or not.

To do this, you have to:

Press Windows + G
Click on settings
See if the “remember this is a Game” is checked or not
If it is not checked, then click on the box beside it

Now since this software is called Game Capture, this option will automatically be enabled in any game. However, if it is not a game you will have to follow the mentioned process.

After you do this you can take a screenshot or even record the screen for some time as a video file. The length of the video you can take depends on your storage limit.

To take a screenshot you have to:

Press Windows + Alt + PrintSc

To take a video you have to:

Press Windows + Alt + R

Alternatively, you can open the game capturing window and manually take the screenshot or record your screen from there as well.

The default directory is

C:\Users\(your user name)\Videos\Captures

If you don’ know this method, or are not able to, you can still use the methods that you used before windows 8 as well.

Windows 10

In Windows 10 a new software was added called Snip and sketch. This software or program is basically the advanced version of the Snipping Tool with a few additional features.

To use Snip and Sketch you have to:

Press Windows + Shift + S
Highlight the area you want to take a screenshot of
Save the image

Additionally, you have a few more options on how to take the screenshot as well which are

Rectangular snip – take the screenshot of a rectangular window
Freeform snip- take a screenshot in an irregular window
Window Snip – take a screenshot of a specific window
Full-screen snip – take the screenshot of the entire window

Along with this, you can do some basic modifications to the snipped image. These modifications include

Cropping
Highlighting
Freeform drawing

If you want to delay this process, you can do so by clicking the arrow button near the “New” option and select the time delay of 3 seconds and 10 seconds.

As with all the versions of the windows, you can still use the methods that you used in the previous versions of the windows.

Windows 11

Although this version of Windows has not been released yet, the hype has been building for months. This hype has increased even more so since it’s some screenshots were leaked in the past month.

We have come a long way from Just pressing PringSc to having tools such as Xbox Game Bar, snipping tools, and snip and sketch. Now while we can only speculate that there will be some form of advancement in screenshot methods. This seems to be the trend that Windows has been following since the release of Windows 7. As Windows 11 will be released on July 24th we will see what new features it will have.

Before we Go,

Taking screenshots and recording the screen has a lot of uses. You can do it to save images that cannot be downloaded, record important meetings or just take a screenshot of funny texts with your friends. As long as you can imagine new ways to use this function, there will be ways.

However, you should note that this feature can also be used as a weapon or as a defense – especially online. People can use this feature to take what you said out of context and use it as a weapon against you. At the same time, you can also use this feature to defend yourself when someone lies about what you said or takes things out of context.

We hope that this was helpful to you. And as always, thank you for reading till the end. If you have any suggestions for us, let us know in the comments below.