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getting a desktop screenshot

In Microsoft Windows, pressing Print Screen will capture the entire screen,1 while pressing the Alt key in combination with Print Screen will capture the currently selected window.1 The captured image can then be pasted into an editing program such as a graphics program or even a word processor. Pressing Print Screen with both the left Alt key and left Shift pressed turns on a high contrast mode (this keyboard shortcut can be turned off by the user).2 Since Windows 8, pressing the Win key in combination with Print Screen (and optionally in addition to the Alt key) will save the captured image to disk (the default pictures location).3 This behavior is therefore backward compatible with users who learned Print Screen actions under operating systems such as MS-DOS.

licensing

Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 3.0. Includes significant content from Print screen on Wikipedia, with modifications.

  1. "Take a screen capture (print your screen) - Windows Help". Microsoft. Retrieved 25 April 2014. ↩↩

  2. "Turn on high contrast mode". Microsoft. Retrieved 2 February 2016. ↩

  3. "Take a screen capture (print your screen) - Windows Help". Microsoft. Retrieved 25 April 2014. ↩