How to take a screenshot without a Print Screen key

Compact laptops, many external keyboards, most Mac keyboards and every Chromebook either hide the Print Screen key behind a modifier or do not have one at all. None of that stops you taking a screenshot. On current Windows the key is arguably the worst of the available options anyway.

Windows: the shortcut worth learning instead

Press the Windows key, Shift and S together. The screen dims and the pointer becomes a crosshair. Drag over the part you want, or use the small toolbar at the top to switch between a rectangle, a freeform shape, a single window, or the whole screen.

The result goes to your clipboard, and a notification offers to open it in Snipping Tool if you want to save or mark it up. This is better than Print Screen in every respect: you choose the area instead of capturing everything, and it works regardless of what your keyboard has in the top row.

If you would rather not memorise anything, open the Start menu and type Snipping Tool. The application does the same job with buttons, including a delay timer for capturing menus that close when they lose focus.

Windows: when the key exists but seems dead

On compact keyboards the key is often printed in a smaller colour on a shared key, labelled PrtSc, PrtScn or Prt Sc. Hold Fn along with it. On many laptops there is also an Fn Lock, usually Fn with Escape, which flips whether the top row acts as function keys or as media keys, and that changes whether the key works without holding Fn at all.

If you have the key and it appears to do nothing, it very likely worked. Print Screen copies to the clipboard without any visible confirmation. Press Control and V somewhere to check before concluding it is broken.

There is also the on-screen keyboard as a last resort. Press the Windows key and type On-Screen Keyboard. It includes a PrtScn key you can click, which is genuinely useful when a physical key has failed.

Mac keyboards do not have one at all

Apple keyboards have never had a Print Screen key, so macOS uses its own combinations instead.

Command, Shift and 3 captures the whole screen. Command, Shift and 4 gives you a crosshair to drag over an area, and pressing Space after it turns the crosshair into a camera that captures one window cleanly. Command, Shift and 5 opens a toolbar with all of the options plus screen recording.

Add Control to any of those and the screenshot goes to your clipboard instead of becoming a file on your Desktop. If you are heading somewhere to paste it, that is the version you want, and it leaves nothing to clean up afterwards.

Chromebooks

ChromeOS uses the Show Windows key, the one with the overlapping rectangles where Function keys would be on other laptops. Press Control and Show Windows for the whole screen, or Control, Shift and Show Windows to select an area.

On a Chromebook with an external Windows keyboard attached, Control and F5 does the same job, because F5 sits where Show Windows would be.

Then what

Every route above ends in one of two places: a file somewhere, or your clipboard. The clipboard is usually the better one, and it is the one people treat as a dead end.

Open Screenshot Files and press Control and V, or Command and V on a Mac, and the screenshot from your clipboard appears in a library, named and ready to crop, annotate, redact, download or share as a link. Nothing is installed, which is the point on a machine where you cannot install anything, and you do not need an account to start.

That covers the situation this page usually gets found from: a borrowed or managed laptop, an unfamiliar keyboard, and a screenshot that needs to get to somebody in the next minute.

Common questions

Which key is Print Screen on a laptop?

Usually in the top row, labelled PrtSc, PrtScn or Prt Sc, and often sharing a key with something else. If the label is in a different colour to the main legend, hold Fn to reach it.

How do I screenshot just one window?

On Windows, press the Windows key, Shift and S and choose the window option from the toolbar, or use Alt and Print Screen if you have the key. On a Mac, press Command, Shift and 4 and then Space, then click the window.

Can I take a screenshot without any keyboard at all?

On Windows, open Snipping Tool from the Start menu and use its buttons. On a Mac, open the Screenshot app from Launchpad. Both work entirely with the mouse.

Where does the screenshot go?

It depends on which route you used, and this is the most common source of confusion. Most of the shortcuts above copy to the clipboard and never write a file at all.