To take a screenshot, you'll need a PC, a phone, and a tape measure.
Make sure to hold your phone precisely 10 inches away from your computer monitor.
You can use the tape measure to verify this.
Once you have the monitor fill the frame of your camera, you can now take your screenshot.
Just kidding.
Please don't do that.
Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Today I want to show you how you can take a screenshot on a Windows 11 PC.
First, we'll look at how you can take a screenshot just by using your keyboard.
Then we'll look at some tools that are included directly with Windows 11 that
give you a little bit more power and at the very end we'll look at the ultimate screenshot tool.
You could take scrolling screenshots, you can annotate your screenshots, and much more.
Oh, and by the way, it's also completely free,
so you'll want to make sure you stick around until the end.
All right, let's check these out.
First, we're going to look at how you can take a screenshot simply by using your keyboard.
Most keyboards include the print screen key. You'll typically find this near the F12 key on
your keyboard. Sometimes it goes by print screen, and other times it'll include an abbreviation.
If you have a laptop, chances are you'll also have
to press the function key or the FN key together with print screen.
When you press print screen, this will take a screenshot of your entire desktop.
If you have multiple monitors, this will include everything.
Once you take a screenshot, this places on your clipboard.
You can then open up an app like Paint, Word, or PowerPoint,
and you can paste it by pressing Control + V.
Print screen is great if you want to take a screenshot of your entire desktop,
but sometimes you just want a screenshot of just one window.
If you press the Alt key together with print screen,
this will take a screenshot of just the currently active window.
And here too you can now paste into an app like Paint.
You could add annotations like let's say some text and then you can save the file.
By default, when you take a screenshot, you'll only have one screenshot on your clipboard.
So here if I take a screenshot of one window, and then I take a screenshot of another window,
when I go to paste, it'll only paste in the last screenshot that I took.
If you want to be able to choose which screenshot you want to paste,
you can turn on something called clipboard history.
Simply press the Windows key together with the V key.
If you've never used this before, you'll have to turn it on.
Now that it's turned on, I can go back in here. I'll take a screenshot of one window again,
and I'll take a screenshot of the other window.
Now when I go to paste, I'll press Windows + V and here I can choose which screenshot I want
to paste. With these shortcut keys, this places your screenshot on the clipboard,
but what if you're playing a game and you just want it to automatically save the screenshot?
You can take all of the shortcut keys that we already learned about,
and you can bring in the Windows logo key. Here for example, I can once again press print
screen together with the Windows logo key and that'll take a screenshot of my entire screen,
but it'll automatically save it under pictures and screenshots.
Here too, I can also use Alt + Print Screen and I'll bring in the Windows logo key.
When I press that, it'll take a screenshot of the currently active window,
but it’ll also save it, and it'll save it under OneDrive in my captures folder.
Let's say I just want a screenshot a portion of my screen.
I can press the Windows logo key together with Shift and S and this launches the Snipping Tool.
Here I can take a rectangular snip,
a freehand, a window, or I could once again go with a full screen.
I'll go with the rectangular snip. Once I highlight the area,
this will add that to my clipboard.
In the bottom right-hand corner, I see this toast notification, and if I click on that,
that’ll bring me to a very basic editor that allows me to annotate my screenshot.
This opens up the Snipping Tool editor, and it's truly basic.
You can add ink annotations, you can highlight,
and you could also crop your image, but that's about it.
If you want to add text or shapes, you have to take your screenshot and you have to bring
it to an app like Paint or PowerPoint. Come on Microsoft, just add a few more features here.
Once you're all done making your edits, you can then save your screenshot.
You can also launch the Snipping Tool by going down to search on
your taskbar and then typing in Snipping Tool.
This once again launches it, but an even easier way to launch the Snipping Tool
is to simply assign it to your print screen key.
Within the Snipping Tool, click on the gear in the top right-hand corner,
and then at the very top, you'll see the option to change the print screen key.
Let's click on this.
This drops us in settings and then here we can turn it on so when you press print screen,
it'll launch the Snipping Tool.
Now that I've set this,
I'll press the Print screen key and here this launches the Snipping Tool.
You can also take screenshots directly in the Edge browser.
If you don't use Edge, you might want to reconsider.
Check out the video up above.
Within Edge, here I am on my favorite website, the KevinCookieCompany.com.
I can right click and then go down to Web capture.
Here I'll select capture area.
At first glance it looks just like the Snipping Tool.
I can highlight an area to capture it.
But the cool thing here is I could scroll down the page
and capture as much as I want on the webpage. That's pretty cool.
Once I release, I have the option to copy to my clipboard,
or I can open up a basic annotation tool, and once again, no text or shapes.
If I once again right click on the website and go down to web capture, I also have the
option to capture the full webpage, and when I click on this, this gives me a screenshot of the
entire website, even though not all of the website was visible on my computer screen.
Edge isn't the only app that supports screenshots.
Here I am in PowerPoint,
and if I click on the insert tab, here I have the option to insert a screenshot.
I can insert a screenshot of one of my open windows,
or I could define the area of the screen that I want a screenshot.
The nice thing about using PowerPoint is you have all of
these rich annotation tools that you can place or layer on top of your screenshot.
All of the major Office apps like Word, OneNote, Outlook, support this functionality.
And lastly, we're going to look at the ultimate screenshot tool and it's called ShareX.
You can get to it up above or I've included a link down below in the description.
On the ShareX website, simply click on download.
It's completely free to download.
Once you finish installing, you'll see an app that looks like this,
and on the main screen, you'll see the main hotkeys.
You can take screenshots and you can also record your screen. Up in the top left-hand corner,
we have the capture menu, and just like with the Snipping Tool, I can capture my full screen,
a window, or just a region, but that's where the similarities end. With ShareX,
you can also capture a scrolling screenshot, and they even have something called text capture OCR.
Let's say you have a PDF with text that you can't edit.
You can take a screenshot of it, and it'll convert it into text that's editable.
That's pretty cool.
I'll capture a region.
With ShareX, it's smart about the region that it selects.
Here, for example, I'm in my web browser and when I hover over and I want to capture the region,
it excludes the browser Chrome. That's pretty cool.
If I want to include the browser Chrome, I can simply move up and it'll automatically
expand the region. ShareX also includes a very powerful annotation editor.
Here I can add shapes. I can also add a call
out with text, so here for example don't forget to order these cookies.
I can also add steps. Here I can add a sticker.
I can also add a mouse cursor.
Here I can pixelate or blur certain areas of my screen.
I can also highlight different areas, and I also have
a bunch of different settings that allow me to customize this experience.
This is seriously the editor that the Snipping Tool should have.
Once I take my screenshot, I can define what happens.
I can have it add it to my clipboard, and I can have it automatically save my image.
Here, I can turn it on, so it only adds it to my clipboard.
I can also have it upload this image to an image host,
and here I could define what that image host is.
Say for example I want to automatically place it on Google Photos.
Another neat feature, I can also apply various effects to my screenshots.
So here for example I can add a black border to this screenshot, and I can even configure it so
that every time I take a screenshot, it'll apply this same set of effects.
ShareX has a ton of functionality and for some that might be a little bit intimidating,
but it truly is the ultimate screenshot tool. If you decide to use it and
you find value from it, I would highly recommend
donating money on their website. This supports the continuing development of the app.
All right, let me know down below in the comments,
what is your favorite method of taking a screenshot? To watch more videos like this one,
please consider subscribing, and I'll see you in the next video.