There are several ways to take a screenshot on your laptop. Major computing platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS, natively give you the option to take screenshots and save content on the screen for future use. There are many shortcuts that you can get used to when taking screenshots on your laptop. You can quickly edit the screenshots you capture to cut out the useless parts and hide your personal data. There are also many ways to directly share the screenshot with others, such as by email.
Apple, Google, Microsoft have provided different ways through which you can take a screenshot on your laptop. There are also third-party apps that can help you take a screenshot and edit it. But you can also use your computer’s built-in mechanism to do this.
In this article, we will give you a step-by-step guide on how to take a screenshot on your laptop. The instructions include different steps to Windows, Mac OS, and Chrome operating system platforms to make it easy for you to capture screenshots regardless of your device make and model.
How to take a screenshot on a Windows laptop
First, we cover the steps you need to take to take a screenshot on a Windows laptop. Microsoft has provided support for the PrtScn button for capturing screenshots in Windows for quite some time. However, with modern computing using graphical interfaces, Windows computers have received a preloaded Snip & Sketch application. This brings a Rectangular Snip option to allow you to drag your cursor around an object to form a rectangle, a Freeform Snip to capture the screenshot in any way you want, and a Window Snip to take a screenshot of a window in particular from multiple available windows. on your system. The app also has a Full Screen Clipping option to capture the entire screen as a screenshot. The steps to take a screenshot on a Windows machine are given below. You can also skip to the next section for the steps you need to take to take a screenshot on a MacBook or any other Mac machine.
press Windows logo key + Change + S together. You will see the clip bar on your screen.
Select between Rectangular cutout, Freeform clipping, Window cutout, Y Full screen cropping.
In order to Rectangular cutout Y Freeform clipping, select the area you would like to capture using the mouse cursor.
Once captured, the screenshot is saved to your clipboard automatically. Click the notification you receive after capturing the screenshot to open it in the Snip & Sketch app.
You can make customizations and use tools to adjust your screenshot, such as cropping or zooming.
Now, click on the save icon in the app to save your screenshot.
If you are an old school Windows user, you can of course use the PrtScn button to save a screenshot of the entire screen to your clipboard. Then you can paste it into MS Paint application or any other photo editing application, customize it and save it as an image on your computer. You can also press PrtScn with him Windows logo key to capture and save your screenshots directly to your computer’s image library.
How to take a screenshot on a MacBook or other Mac computer
Unlike a Windows computer, Mac machines do not have a preloaded application or support for capturing screenshots with a dedicated button. However, Apple’s macOS also has a native way of taking a screenshot on MacBook and other Mac computers. Below are the steps detailing how you can do this.
- press Change + Command + 3 together to take a screenshot of the entire screen.
- A thumbnail will now appear in the corner of your screen to confirm that a screenshot has been captured.
- Click the screenshot preview to edit it. If you don’t want to edit it, you can wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.
If you don’t want to capture the entire screen, you can press and hold Change + Command + 4 keys together. This will bring up a crosshair pointer that you can drag to select the part of the screen you want to capture. You can also move the selection by pressing the Space bar while dragging. You can also cancel by pressing the Esc key code.
Apple also allows you to take a screenshot of a window or menu on Mac by pressing the Change + Command + 4 + Space bar together.
By default, macOS saves screenshots on your desktop. Apple, however, allows users to change the default location of saved screenshots to macOS Mojave and later versions. It can be done from the Options menu in the Screenshot application.
How to take a screenshot on a Chromebook
Google’s Chrome operating system also has shortcuts that you can use to take a screenshot on a Chromebook. You can press Ctrl + Show Windows to take a screenshot of the full screen. You can also take a partial screenshot by pressing Change + control + Show windows together and then click and drag the area you want to capture.
Chrome OS on tablets allows you to capture screenshots by pressing the power button and the volume down button at the same time.
Once captured, screenshots on Chrome OS are also copied to clipboard, just like Windows. You can paste them into an application to save for future use.
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