How to Take a Screenshot on a PC or Laptop
To take a screenshot on a PC or laptop, press the Print Screen key on your keyboard, also spelled "Prnt Scrn" or "PrtSc." It's located in the top row of your keyboard, next to the F12 key.
Upon pressing the key, what happens after depends on the configuration of your operating system. We'll see below some examples.
How to Take a Screenshot in Smartphones and Tablets
In smartphones and tablets, there is no Print Screen key. Instead, we have to use the side buttons.
On Android smartphones, "press the power and volume down buttons at the same time"1 to take a screeshot.
On iPhone smartphones, it depends on the model: on iPhone 14, "press the side button and the volume up button at the same time," on other models, "press the side button and the Home button at the same time"2 to take a screenshot.
On an iPad, it depends on the model: if there is a home button, "press the top button and the Home button at the same time," otherwise "press the top button and either volume button at the same time"3 to take a screenshot.
Taking Screenshots Windows
On Windows 11, upon pressing the Print Screen key, the screen will become darker and at the top of the screen a bar will appear to control what to do exactly. On this bar you can choose whether to take a screenshot of the whole screen, of a single window, or of an arbitrary region of the screen.
Upon taking a screenshot, two things happen: first, the image will be copied to your clipboard, which means you can "paste" the screenshot with Ctrl+V after taking it; second, an image file in the PNG format containing the captured image will be saved to your Pictures folder, inside a folder called Screenshots.
In old Windows versions, like Windows 7, the key only copied the image to the clipboard and didn't save files.
It's also possible to choose to record the screen on Windows 11, that is, to record a video of the screen.
Taking Screenshots on Linux
On Linux, upon pressing the Print Screen key, what happens depends on which program is configured in your desktop environment to be executed when you press the Print Screen key. The default varies from distro to distro. In some cases, you'll have a very simple program, in other cases it may have various functions, such as: taking a screenshot after a few seconds, allowing you to capture the mouse cursor or not, etc.
References
- https://support.google.com/android/answer/9075928 (accessed 2024-09-28) ↩︎
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/102616 (accessed 2024-09-28) ↩︎
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/102500 (accessed 2024-09-28) ↩︎
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