How to Take a Screenshot on Laptop, MacBook, or Chromebook

There are various ways to take a screenshot on your laptop, MacBook or Chromebook. There are also many shortcuts that you can use for taking screenshots on your laptop.

Windows, MacBook and Chromebooks have  distinct ways through which you can take a screenshot on your laptop. There are also third-party apps that can help you take a screenshot and edit them. In this article, we will give you a step-by-step guide on how to take a screenshot on your laptop.

How to Take a Screenshot a Dell Laptop

 

How to take a screenshot on a Windows laptop, MacBook, or Chromebook

Microsoft has provided support for the PrtScn button to capture screenshots on Windows for quite some time. You can use the PrtScn button to save a screenshot of the entire screen on to your clipboard. You can then paste it to the MS Paint app or any other photo editor app, customise it, and save it as an image on your computer. Pressing PrtScn button along with the Windows logo key lets you capture and save your screenshots directly to the Pictures library on your computer.

However, nowadays,  Windows computers have received a preloaded Snip & Sketch app. This brings a Rectangular Snip option to let you drag the cursor around an object to form a rectangle, a free-form Snip to capture the screenshot in any shape you like, and a Window Snip to take screenshot of a particular window from multiple windows available on your system. The app also has a Fullscreen Snip option to capture the entire screen as a screenshot. The steps to take a screenshot on a Windows laptop are given below.

  1. Press Windows logo key + Shift + S together. You’ll see the snipping bar on your screen.
  2. Select among Rectangular SnipFreeform SnipWindow Snip, and Fullscreen Snip.
  3. For Rectangular Snip and Freeform Snip, select the area you would like to capture using the mouse cursor.
  4. Once captured, the screenshot is saved to your clipboard automatically. Click on the notification you get after capturing the screenshot to open it on the Snip & Sketch app.
  5. You can make customisations and use tools to adjust your screenshot, such as crop or zoom.
  6. Now, click the save icon on the app to save your screenshot.

How to take a screenshot on a MacBook or other Mac computer

MacBook doesn’t have a preloaded app or support for capturing screenshots using a dedicated button. Below are the steps that detail how you can do that.

  1. Press Shift + Command + 3 together to take a screenshot of the entire screen.
  2. A thumbnail will now appear in the corner of your screen to confirm that a screenshot has been captured.
  3. Click on the preview of the screenshot to edit it. If you don’t want to edit it, you can wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.

However, if you don’t want to capture the entire screen, you can press and hold Shift + Command + 4 keys together. This will bring a crosshair pointer that you can drag to select the part of the screen you want to capture. You can also move the selection by pressing the Space bar while dragging. And you can also cancel it by pressing the Esc key.

One can take a screenshot of a window or a menu on Mac by pressing the Shift + Command + 4 + Space bar together.

How to Take A Screenshot on a Chromebook

How to take a screenshot on a Chromebook

Google’s Chrome OS also has shortcuts that you can use to take a screenshot on a Chromebook. For that you need to do the following:

  • You can press Ctrl + Show Windows to take a screenshot of the full screen.
  • You can also take a partial screenshot by pressing Shift + Ctrl + Show Windows together and then clicking and dragging the area you want to capture.

Using the above mentioned steps, you can easily take screenshot on your laptop, MacBook, or Chromebook.