How to take a screenshot on any device: Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, iPhone, Android

Every operating system can take a screenshot, and every one of them hides the shortcut somewhere different. This page is the reference: full screen, region, and window capture for each platform, plus the detail that trips most people up, which is where the capture actually goes. Some shortcuts save a file, some copy to the clipboard, and a few do both.

The clipboard versions matter more than they look. A capture that lands on the clipboard can be pasted straight into a chat, a document, or the paste tool on this site, with no file to find and clean up afterward.

Windows

• Win+Shift+S is the one to learn. It dims the screen and lets you drag a rectangle, and the capture goes to the clipboard. A notification lets you open it in Snipping Tool for markup.

• PrtScn copies the full screen to the clipboard. On many laptops you need to hold Fn for it to register.

• Alt+PrtScn copies only the active window. Underrated for bug reports, since it cuts the desktop clutter automatically.

• Win+PrtScn saves a PNG to Pictures > Screenshots and briefly dims the screen to confirm.

Snipping Tool itself, in the Start menu, adds a delay timer, which is the trick for capturing menus that close the moment you press a key.

macOS

• Cmd+Shift+4 turns the cursor into crosshairs for a region capture, saved as a file on the desktop.

• Cmd+Shift+4, then Space captures one window, with its shadow, cleanly cut out.

• Cmd+Shift+3 captures the full screen to a file.

• Add Ctrl to any of these and the capture goes to the clipboard instead of a file. Cmd+Shift+Ctrl+4 is the region-to-clipboard combo that pairs best with paste-to-share.

• Cmd+Shift+5 opens the screenshot toolbar, where you can pick a save location, set a timer, or record the screen as video.

Linux

On GNOME (Ubuntu, Fedora), pressing PrtScn opens an interactive capture overlay where you pick region, window, or full screen; the result is saved to Pictures and copied to the clipboard at the same time. On KDE, the same job belongs to Spectacle, usually bound to PrtScn as well. Window managers without a screenshot UI typically lean on command-line tools, and if you are in that camp you already know which one you use.

Chromebook

Chromebooks use the Show Windows key, the one that looks like a rectangle with two lines. Ctrl+Show Windows captures the full screen. Ctrl+Shift+Show Windows opens the capture toolbar for region and window shots. Captures land in the Downloads folder and in the clipboard-like Tote area by the clock.

iPhone and iPad

On Face ID models, press the side button and volume up together. On older Touch ID models, it is the home button and the side button. The thumbnail that appears in the corner is worth tapping: the preview editor can crop and mark up the shot, and in Safari it offers a Full Page mode that captures the entire scrolling page.

Android

Press power and volume down together on nearly every model. A screenshot button also lives in the quick settings tray if the button combo is awkward one-handed. On Android 12 and later, the capture preview shows a Capture more option that extends the shot down a scrolling page. Screenshots land in the gallery under a Screenshots album.

Menus, tooltips, and other things that vanish

Some interface states close the instant you touch the keyboard, which makes them impossible to capture with a plain shortcut. Every platform hides a delay timer for exactly this. Windows Snipping Tool offers 3, 5, and 10 second delays from its toolbar. On macOS, the Cmd+Shift+5 panel has a timer under Options. GNOME's capture overlay includes one too. Set the delay, open the menu you need, hold still, and the capture fires with the menu open.

Video is the other classic failure. Streaming apps with DRM, Netflix being the famous case, hand the browser protected frames that come out solid black in captures. That is not a bug in your screenshot tool, it is the content protection working as designed, and no capture setting gets around it.

Multiple monitors

Full-screen shortcuts treat multi-monitor setups differently per platform. Windows PrtScn grabs every display stitched into one wide image, while Win+PrtScn saves that same panorama as a file. macOS saves one file per display instead. If you only want one screen's worth, the region shortcuts sidestep the whole question, which is one more reason they are the better habit.

When a screenshot is the wrong tool

Anything that moves, a flickering bug, a layout jumping during load, a multi-step flow, communicates better as a recording. The recorders are already installed: Cmd+Shift+5 on macOS records the screen, Win+G opens the Windows Game Bar recorder, and both iOS and Android have screen recording buttons in their quick settings. For interface bugs, a five-second clip regularly settles what three annotated stills cannot.

Clipboard or file: know where your capture went

The single most common screenshot confusion is pressing a shortcut and not knowing where the image ended up. The short version: Windows region and full-screen shortcuts are clipboard-first, macOS is file-first unless you add Ctrl, phones are always file-first, and GNOME does both at once.

Clipboard captures are ephemeral. Copy anything else and the screenshot is gone, so the habit that works is capture, paste, done, in one motion. File captures pile up instead, which is why every laptop has a desktop or Downloads folder full of forgotten PNGs.

From capture to a link someone can open

A screenshot is usually taken to be shown to someone else, and the fastest path from capture to shared depends on where the capture went. If it is on the clipboard, open the paste tool and press Ctrl+V; the Ctrl+V guide walks through the whole flow, including the optional crop. If it is a file, drag it onto the same dropzone. Either way you get a short URL that works in any chat or ticket, which beats attaching the PNG in most of the situations covered in the sharing guide.

One habit worth stealing from support engineers: capture the region, not the screen. A tight capture of the error dialog answers the question by itself, while a full-screen shot makes the reader hunt. The crop guide covers trimming after the fact, but capturing tight in the first place is faster still.