How To Take A Screenshot On A Laptop? 5 Quick And Easy Ways To Do It

Last Updated on 22 January, 2023 by Sourav Roy

Do you know how to take a screenshot on a laptop? I bet you don’t know them all. There are some that even advanced users don’t know about. I’m more than happy to tell you about all these obscure ways and what extra benefits you can get from them. They’re super convenient and allow you a lot more flexibility with the pictures you take of your screen.

Method 1: Quick Screenshots

This is the simplest and quickest way to take screenshots. All you need to do is press the Windows key and the PrtScn key at once. Windows will then take a picture of the screen and save it in a folder named “Screenshots” in the User Pictures folder. You can find the latter under the Quick Access panel on the left side of Windows Explorer.

If you can’t find the correct folder, go to your Windows Explorer, click the address bar and copy-paste the following address into it: “%userprofile%\Pictures\Screenshots”. Make sure to exclude the quotes, and you’ll be taken directly to the folder where your screenshot is stored.

Method 2: Snipping Tool

Using the Snipping Tool lets you take screenshots quickly, and it also allows you to do some level of editing. You won’t have complete freedom with what you can do, but you can still do some quick edits. The best thing about Snipping Tool is its Rectangular Selection mode. With Rectangular Selection, you can take a screenshot of a specific part of the screen. Additionally, you can also highlight and mark content.

To open the Snipping Tool, bring up Windows Search by pressing the Windows Key and S Key. You can search the app name there and open it from the results. Once it’s open, all you need to do to take the screenshot is press the “New” button. Your cursor will become a plus sign, which you can use to select and screenshot a certain area. Lastly, you can save the screenshot after editing it by right-clicking and pressing Save As.

Method 3: Copy Pasting With The PrtScn Button

Unlike the first method, you can use this one to edit your screenshot even more. Press the PrtScn button to copy the current screen onto your clipboard, then open up Paint. Once open, press Ctrl+V to paste the screenshot onto the Paint page. After doing that, you can customise the screenshot with shapes and text boxes.

Method 4: Quick Snipping

You can press the Windows, Shift and S Keys together to open up a similar screenshot app to the Snipping Tool- the Snip And Sketch app. It’s useful for taking quick screenshots of portions of the screen to paste them into messaging apps in a browser like Whatsapp or Messenger. The difference is that you won’t be able to directly edit the output or save it. It’ll be copied to the clipboard and can only be pasted directly to a chat interface or Paint. You can save the image after you do the latter.

You can also set your PrtScn button to open up this app by default, rather than taking a screenshot of the whole screen to the clipboard. To do so, open up Settings and go to Ease Of Access. There’s a Keyboard option at the bottom of the left pane. Then, scroll down the right pane till you see the option below and turn it on.

Method 5: Fn Key

You can use this variation of Method 3 if your PrtScn key is on an F key. To take screenshots using this sort of key, you have to hold down the “Fn” key first before pressing the Print Screen key. Most laptops have individual keys and don’t combine the screenshot key with the F keys, but many entry-level laptops have such key combinations due to the smaller form factor.

Wrapping Up

There you go; you now know how to take screenshots on a laptop in different ways. These methods may seem simple, but you’d be surprised to know how many people don’t know about some of them. I’m sure you learnt a new way that’s more convenient for you after reading through everything I said.

That’s all for now. I hope this post helped you with your curiosities. I’ll see you in the next article.

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Abir B.

Product Analyst at Homeliness

Abir is an expert with electronics that more frequently used and interacted with. Computers and Smartphones, to be more specific. However, his expertise also extends to categories like Audio Equipment, which are some of the things he’s done jobs for over the years. In fact, at 34 years old now, he’s been working professionally for the earlier fields for plenty of years and has built up a large repertoire of knowledge.