Screenshots and Screen Recordings

Windows 11 includes various ways to capture, save, edit, and share screenshots–still images that represent the contents of your PC’s display–and screen recordings, video representations of what’s happening on-screen.

Defaults

Windows 11 supports classic keyboard shortcuts for capturing screenshots, some dating back many decades, though most of them work a bit differently now. They are:

• Print screen. When you tap this key, the Snipping Tool appears so you can capture a screenshot or screen recording.

• Windows key + Print screen. This keyboard shortcut works as before: It captures a screenshot of the entire screen, saves it as a PNG file in your Screenshots folder, and copies the image to the Clipboard.
• Alt + Print screen. This keyboard shortcut captures a screenshot of the active window and copies the image to the Clipboard.

Tip: If you sign in to Windows 11 with a Microsoft account, a OneDrive window appears the first time you type either of the latter two shortcuts and asks if you would like to store them in Microsoft’s cloud storage service as well as locally on this PC. You can choose between “Save to OneDrive,” “Ask me later,” and “No thanks” options.

Though they are designed to capture game screenshots and screen recordings, there are also two Game Bar keyboard shortcuts that work outside of games: Windows key + Alt + Print Screen will capture a screenshot of the active window and Windows key + Alt + R will start a screen recording. In both cases, the result is saved to the Captures folder in your Videos folder.

Customize

Microsoft configures the Snipping Tool in-box app to run when you press the Print screen key, but you can change this to work as it did in the past and simply capture a screenshot of the entire screen and copy the image to the Clipboard.

To do so, open the Settings app, navigate to Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard and configure the option “Use the Print screen key to open screen capture” to “Off.”

Snipping Tool

Snipping Tool is a modern app that should meet most users’ screenshot and screen recording needs.

Tip: Unfortunately, Snipping Tool uses its own language for these tasks: It refers to screenshots as “static image snips” and screen recording as “video snips.”

Defaults

Snipping Tool offers two different user interfaces, depending on how you start the app:

• Run Snipping Tool normally. When you launch Snipping Tool from Start or Windows Search, the app appears as a small floating window with a toolbar that provides several commands related to screenshots and screen recordings.

• Tap the Print screen key. Here, the screen dims and Snipping Tool appears at the top displaying only its toolbar and various options.

Snipping Tool supports the following actions via its toolbar buttons:

• New screenshot/recording. Available only in the normal app window, the “+ New” button is used to start capturing a new screenshot or screen recording, depending on which capture mode the app is currently configured to use.

Keyboard shortcut: You can also type “Ctrl + N” to capture a new screenshot or screen recording.

• Snip/Record. This toggle button is used to switch the app between its two available capture modes, Snip (screenshot) and Record (screen recording).
• Snipping area. Available when Snipping Tool is in Snip (screenshot) mode, this button opens a drop-down so you can choose between “Rectangle,” “Window,” “Full screen,” and “Freeform” snipping areas.

• Perfect screenshot (Copilot+ PCs only). Available only in the app’s full-screen capture mode and with the Snipping area set to “Rectangle”, this feature uses local, on-device AI to examine the area of the screenshot you take and then trim it intelligently. When it’s done, there are grab handles around the selection area in case you want to fine-tune it before clicking the provided “Capture” button.

Tip: You can also invoke Perfect screenshot by holding down the Ctrl key while the Snipping area is set to “Rectangle.”

• Delay snip. This button is available when Snipping Tool is run normally and is in Snip (screenshot) mode. It lets you optionally delay the start of a screenshot capture by 3, 5, or 10 seconds.
• Text extractor. This incredibly useful tool can be used to highlight all the text in the capture area so you can copy the text to the Clipboard and use it in any app that supports plain text. There are two options, “Automatically copy text” and “Remove line breaks,” that are off by default but accessible via a “More options” (“…”) button.

• Quick markup. Only available in the full-screen capture experience, this button acts as a toggle you can enable so that when you make a capture, you can access pen, highlighter, eraser, and shapes tools on-screen to mark up the captured area before saving it.
• Click to Do. (Copilot+ PCs only). This button acts as a front-end for the standalone Click to Do app on Copilot+ PCs that lets you interact with on-screen graphics and text in powerful ways.

• Color picker. Available only in the full-screen capture experience, this tool is useful for anyone who needs to get an exact color they see on-screen so they can use it elsewhere. When selected, a Color picker pane appears on-screen with a color format chooser–so you can switch between hex, RGB, and Hue, Saturation, and Lightness (HSL) color formats–and the mouse cursor turns into a color picker with a floating window displaying the color below it. When you find the color you want, just click it’s saved to the Clipboard as text.

• Open file. Available in the normal app window, this option lets you open an image or video file so you can view or edit it with Snipping Tool.
• Settings. Available in the normal app window, this opens the Snipping Tool settings interface.

Screenshots are saved in PNG format to your Screenshots folder (in your Pictures folder), while screen recordings are saved in MP4 format and saved to your Screen recording folder (in your Videos folder). It doesn’t support using other image and video formats.

Tip: One feature Snipping Tool lacks–in both Snip (screenshot) and Record (screen recording) modes–is the ability to capture the mouse pointer. If you need to do that, you must use a third-party utility like and Greenshot or ShareX instead.

Customize

Before using Snipping Tool to capture screenshots or screen recordings, you should make sure it’s configured properly for your needs.

To do so, open Snipping Tool, click “See more” (“…”), and then choose “Settings” in the menu that appears.

As with other modern in-box Windows 11 apps, the settings interface appears inside the main app window rather than in a separate window. But if Snipping Tool is in its default configuration–a small floating window–then most of the settings interface will be cut off.

To see more, resize or maximize the Snipping Tool app window.

Snipping Tool settings has different sections for screen captures (“Snipping”) and screen recordings. Most of these are straightforward, but the following options are noteworthy:

• Automatically copy changes. Available separately for both screenshots (screen captures) and screen recordings, this option determines whether either capture is also copied to the Clipboard. It’s enabled by default.
• Screenshots are saved to. This option lets you configure the save location for screenshots.
• Screen recordings are saved to. As above, but for screen recordings.

Capture and edit a screenshot

Snipping Tools provided extensive screenshot capture and editing capabilities. And if you have a Copilot+ PC, there are additional features that take advantage of local, on-device AI that can be quite useful.

Capture a screenshot

To capture a screenshot, tap the Print screen key or open Snipping Tool and click “New.” Either way, the screen dims and a floating toolbar appears as described earlier.

Unless you changed this previously, Snipping mode is in Snip (screenshot) capture mode by default, you can just accept the defaults and make the screenshot, or you can access the various options presented by the buttons in the app’s toolbar, as described earlier in the chapter.

If you capture a screenshot or screen recording from the full-screen Snipping Tool interface, a banner notification appears displaying a thumbnail of the capture.

You can click its “Markup and share” button to display the normal Snipping Tool app experience that displays the capture below the toolbar.

Edit a screenshot

After you capture a screenshot, a thumbnail of the capture appears in the Snipping Tool window, along with several new controls related to editing, sharing, and saving the capture.

Tip: This window is resizable and the capture will scale as you resize it. The available controls can move to different positions within the app depending on how you size it.

Available tools include:

• Ballpoint pen. This markup tool lets you draw or write on the screenshot in various colors and sizes.
• Highlighter. This markup tool works like a virtual highlighter and it also supports multiple colors and sizes.
• Eraser. This markup tool lets you erase the ballpoint pen and highlighter additions you previously made individually or, via an “Erase all mark-ups” option in a drop-down, all of them with one click.
• Shapes. This displays a toolbar with options to draw emojis or various shapes on the screenshot with fill and outline choices.
• Image crop. This provides a cropping interface with drag handles but no preset aspect ratio choices.

• Scan text. As described earlier, this tool highlights all the on-screen text in a screenshot so you can copy the text to the Clipboard and use it in any app that supports plain text.
• Undo/Redo. Snipping Tool keeps a history of edits so you can individually undo or redo them as needed.
• Edit in Paint. This opens the saved screenshot in Paint.
• Save as. This lets you save another copy of the image file in a different location and/or with a different name.
• Copy. Click this to copy the edited screenshot to the Windows Clipboard.
• Share. Click this to share the screenshot using the system Share pane.
• Zoom. Snipping Tool displays the screenshot fully so that it fits within the size of the app window, but you can use the sub-controls here to zoom in and out arbitrarily or display the screenshot full-sized.
• Show ruler/Hide ruler. This displays an on-screen ruler so you can draw precise straight lines using the Ballpoint pen or highlighter tools. To rotate the ruler, use your multitouch touchpad with two fingers or position the mouse cursor in the center of the ruler and then scroll the wheel on your mouse.

• Visual Search with Bing. Click this to open Bing with your default web browser and search online for an image similar to the screenshot.
• Open file. Click this to open any image file and use any Snipping Tool features with it.
• Open screenshots folder. This will open your Screenshots folder in File Explorer.
• Print. Click this to print the screenshot.
• Settings. Click this to access Snipping Tool settings.

Capture and edit a screen recording

Clipchamp can be used to make and edit screen recordings, though these features are more basic than the app’s screenshot capabilities.

Capture a screen recording

To make a screen recording, open Snipping Tool and toggle the “Snip/Record” to “Record.” Then, you can choose from two Recording area options, “Rectangle” or “Window.”

Tip: No, there’s no “Full screen” option, which is the choice I would make most times. But you can capture the entire screen by choosing “Rectangle” and then drawing a rectangle that stretches from one screen corner to the far screen corner.

How you start the recording varies a bit depending on which Snipping Tool interface you’re using.

• Normal app. Choose a Recording area option, click the “+ New” button, and then use the mouse cursor to choose the window or rectangle area you wish to capture.
• Full-screen experience. Use the mouse cursor, which resembles a “+” selection shape, to choose the window or rectangle area you wish to capture.

Either way, a recording overlay will appear with a prominent “Start recording” button and buttons to toggle the microphone and system audio on/off.

When you’re ready to record, click “Start recording.” After a three-second countdown, screen recording begins and the Snipping Tool overlay displays “Pause recording” and “Stop recording” buttons next to a counter that displays the length of the recording in real time. There’s also a trashcan-like “Discard recording” button if you want to give up and start over.

As you record, the area being recorded is surrounded by a colored rectangle.

When you’re done recording, click the red “Stop recording” button in the Snipping Tool overlay. Two things happen:

• The screen recording is saved to a Screen recordings sub-folder in your Videos folder
• The Snipping Tool app window reappears on-screen and displays the recording you just created along with basic playback and editing controls.

If you don’t need to edit the recording, you can preview it using the playback controls at the bottom, close Snipping Tool or click one of the following buttons in the upper-right of the app window:

• Save as. This lets you save another copy of the recording file in a different location and/or with a different name.
• Copy. Click this to copy the recording file to the Windows Clipboard.
• Share. Click this to share the recording file using the system Share pane.
• Create GIF. This will convert the recording file (which is in .MP4 format) to an animated GIF and export it using “Low” and “High” quality presets.
• Open screen recordings folder. Click this to open your Screen recordings folder in File Explorer (C:\Users\*username*\Videos\Screen Recordings by default).

Edit a screen recording

Snipping Tool offers a basic video trim feature for editing the video. In short, you can trim the beginning and/or end of the recording only.

To trim the recording, click the “Trim” button in the middle top of the window.

Here, you can drag the handles on either side of the timeline scrubber at the bottom to trim the beginning and end of the recording while testing the results with the “Play”/”Pause” button. When you’re done, click “Apply” to save the editing recording or “Cancel” to leave it as it was.

Video trim is the most common need for a basic screen recording, but you can also click the “Edit in Clipchamp” button to edit it further with Clipchamp, the full-featured video editor that also comes with Windows 11.

Learn more: Clipchamp also has its own built-in screen recording features, and they are significantly more powerful than what’s available in Snipping Tool.