In the early days of personal computers, the [Print] key served a single practical purpose: to print displayed screen contents of operating systems like MS-DOS to paper. In succeeding versions, the function has changed: [Print] became a versatile hotkey for creating screenshots in Windows.
In Windows 11, you can use the [Print] key to screenshot whatever is displayed and save it to the clipboard – the operating system’s temporary memory. In addition, [Print] can be combined with other keys, for example, to capture only sections of a screen. Here are the most important key combinations for screenshots in Windows 11:
- [Print]: Press this button (sometimes also [Prnt] or [Prnt Scrn]) and everything visible on your screen(s) is saved to the clipboard. You can then paste the screenshot into any application that displays images (such as Paint or Word) by pressing [Ctrl] + [v].
- [Alt] + [Print]: If you combine the [Print] key with [Alt], Windows 11 will not take a screenshot of the entire screen, but only a screenshot of the active window. To do this, simply select the desired window with the cursor.
- [Windows] + [Print]: Use this key combination to save a screenshot as an image file in Windows 11. In this case, an image of the entire screen is stored in PNG format in the user-specific directory .ImagesScreenshots.
- [Windows] key + [Shift ⇧] + [s]: Press this key combination to access a screenshot tool. This lets you frame any section of the screen and save it as a screenshot to the clipboard. The function also lets you cut and screenshot a window or the entire screen.