Screenshots are the simplest way to show off your new program, point out a bug, and save that picture on Facebook to your camera roll. They're the easiest way to save anything on your screen. And they're so integral to the way we work, every operating system comes equipped with a screenshot tool.
But screenshots aren't always simple. If you aren't careful, screenshots can accidentally expose private information or obscure the part of a website you need to share. Built-in screen capture tools often hide behind cryptic keyboard shortcuts. And when a picture alone won't cut it, you'll need to make a video or GIF to show what's happening on your screen.
Screenshot Tools, Tips, and Shortcuts: How to Capture Anything on Your Screen The Best Screenshot Apps and Shortcuts. Skitch makes it simple to grab a timed screenshot on your Mac, add quick annotations to the shot on your Mac or iOS device, and share the file just by dragging-and-dropping it. How to Edit Screenshots. There are a few. Monosnap is a free screen capture tool for Mac and Windows, which gives all of the aforementioned features and more. Capture Screenshots, Record Screen & Backup to the Cloud Monosnap provides all kinds of screen grabbing options.
Here's the guide you need to take the best screenshots everywhere.
Why Take Screenshots?
Why should you care about taking high-quality screenshots? Because now, more than ever, we speak through pictures.
Photography used to be a time-consuming, expensive endeavor. You'd try hard to make each picture count. No one ever took photos of their parking spot to keep from losing their car, or of a price tag in a store just to comparison shop.
Smartphones changed that. Now everyone carries a camera, and pictures are for more than special occasions. Sure, we take pictures of sunsets and babies, but also of receipts, our refrigerators, street signs, and ourselves (lots of pictures of ourselves).
Screenshots are the perfect way to save a picture of anything on your screen.
We're visual communicators. And like your writing, your visual communication needs to be clear, concise, and to-the-point.
Screenshot tools let you do that with your digital life. You might photograph something to remember or share it—and you'll screenshot for the same reason. Screenshots are the simplest way to share your screen with anyone, anywhere. Whether it's a cute Facebook photo, a tricky bug, or a quickly-deleted Tweet from a politician, everyone has reasons to take screenshots.
But you still need to take quality screenshots—especially if you're using them at work, or for your customers. Here are some quick tips on grabbing superior screenshots. Then, we'll dive into the nuts and bolts.
How to Take High-Quality Screenshots
Screenshots are more than just pictures of software—they're pictures of your workspace, with all the info you might see right now. That's why you shouldn't just snap a random screenshot.
Think carefully about what's on your screen and why you're shooting it, to make sure your screenshots are perfect for their intended purpose. Here are a few pointers:
Say I'm writing a blog post about how to edit documents in Google Docs. I'll take a screenshot of my full browser, with an article I'm editing open in Google Docs. Then, I open the screenshot in Apple Preview on my Mac (or perhaps in Microsoft Paint on a PC), delete the email address from the top corner if I hadn't already removed it via Inspect Element, and perhaps add an arrow to point out the New Changes button to show readers how to see previous versions of their work. I'll finally crop the image to show only the essential parts before adding it to our blog post.
There's a reason for everyone to take screenshots today—and tools to capture them on almost every device. Here are steps for taking screenshots on most modern computers, smartphones, and more.
How to Take Screenshots on Windows
Windows PCs make it so easy to capture screenshots, there's a dedicated key on your keyboard for it: PrtScn (or Print Screen or PrtSc, depending on your keyboard). Tap that key, and Windows will copy a screenshot of your entire screen to your clipboard, which you can then paste into a document or blank Paint canvas to save.
For more specific screenshots, Windows has built-in keyboard shortcuts for screenshots:
Have a Microsoft Surface tablet or laptop? Instead of the PrtScn key, here are the keyboard shortcuts to use:
→ Find more Windows screenshot tools and shortcuts, including how to capture video and timed screenshots, in our Windows Screenshot Guide.
How to Take Screenshots on Mac
Macs don't come with a screenshot button, but you can still capture anything on your screen with the default Mac screenshot keyboard shortcuts:
Best Screenshot App For Mac
→ Find more macOS screenshot tools and shortcuts, including how to screenshot the Touch Bar, capture video, and include the mouse cursor in your screenshots in our macOS Screenshot Guide.
How to Take Screenshots on Ubuntu
Taking screenshots in Ubuntu—one of the most popular Linux desktop distributions—works almost the same as on a Windows PC. You'll likely use a standard Windows keyboard with Ubuntu, so the PrtScn key is still the easiest way to take a screenshot. The only difference is, on Ubuntu, PrtScn will capture a screenshot, then show a dialog where you can choose to copy the screenshot to the clipboard or save it to your computer.
Here are the default Ubuntu screenshot keyboard shortcuts:
The selection tool will change your mouse cursor to a crosshair, which you can use to select a rectangle of your screen to capture.
Tip: If your keyboard doesn't have a
PrtScn key, you can set a custom shortcut to take screenshots in Ubuntu from the Keyboard options in your System Settings.
Ubuntu also includes a Screenshot app, which works much like the Snipping Tool in Windows. It can capture a specific window or just a section of the screen—and can also show or hide the mouse cursor and window interface.
See all standard Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts in the Ubuntu documentation.
How to Take Screenshots on Chrome OS
When you only need web apps, Chromebooks are a great—and cheap—alternative to traditional laptops. And they, too, let you take keyboard shortcuts, using the window switcher key like the one in the icon above or the F5 key on traditional keyboards.
Here are the default Chrome OS screenshot keyboard shortcuts:
Chrome OS saves the screenshot to your download folder by default. Also, it shows a notification after you've captured a screenshot—click it to copy the screenshot to your clipboard.
See all standard Chrome OS keyboard shortcuts in the Chromebook documentation.
How to Take Screenshots on iOS
One of the reasons screenshots are so popular today is that they're easy to capture and share your phone. On an iPhone or iPad, press the home button and the power button at the same time, and iOS will save a full-screen screenshot to your Photos app. Screenshots are automatically saved to the Screenshots album, so you can see all screenshots in the same place. In newer versions of iOS, you'll see a preview of your screenshot as soon as you take it—tap that to annotate and share the screenshot directly.
You can also record a video of your iPhone or iPad screen. Add the Screen Recording widget from your iPhone or iPad's Control Center settings, then tap Record from that new widget in Control Center to save a video to your camera roll. If you have a Mac, you can also record a screencast from your iPhone or iPad with QuickTime. Just connect your phone to your Mac with the USB cable, select New Movie Recording in QuickTime on your Mac, then click the down arrow beside the record button and select your iPhone or iPad. Now click the red record button, use your device to showcase what you want, then save the video in QuickTime.
How to Take Screenshots on Android
For screenshots, at least, Android and iPhone are pretty similar. On Android, press the power and volume down button at the same time for a moment to save a screenshot to your Photos app under Screenshots.
Image Editing Tool For Mac
That's the default on Android, and should work on any Google Pixel device and many other Android phones and tablets. But since there are many Android variations out there, your specific device may have customized shortcuts for screenshots; Samsung Galaxy devices, for example, have you press the home and power button to capture screenshots, as on an iPhone.
To capture a screencast on Android, use the YouTube Gaming app—much like you'd use the Xbox app on PCs. Install YouTube Gaming, click the Go Live button, tweak the video settings, then use your device as usual and it'll capture a screencast in the background and let you share it on YouTube or save it to your Photos app.
How to Take Better Web Screenshots
Need to take a screenshot of a webpage? The default screenshot tools on your computer should be plenty in most cases. The only problem is, most web apps show your name or email address in the top right corner, along with other private info you might not like to share.
Screenshot Editing Tool Mac
You could blur the sensitive info in Photoshop, but a cleaner, more professional option is to use Inspect Element. Just right-click on a webpage, click Inspect, then click the selector tool and click on the part of the webpage you want to change. You can then replace the text on the web page, perhaps with a generic email address instead of your real address. It's a simple way to hack the web, for a good cause.
Need to capture a full-page screenshot of a website? You can do that from Chrome's Developer Tools as well.
Just open the Developer Tools by pressing
Alt + Command + I on a Mac, or Ctrl + Shift + C on Windows. click the mobile device icon in the far left corner, then click the 3-dot button and select Capture full-size screenshot.
Check out this tutorial on how to capture full-page website screenshots in Chrome for more details.
Or, if you'd like to annotate a screenshot with arrows and highlights, the Evernote Web Clipper is a handy tool. Click it, then select Screenshot and drag your mouse over the part of the page you want to save. You can then add annotations, and save or share your tweaked screenshot.
Tip: Learn more about how to use Inspect Element to tweak websites and learn web design in our Inspect Element guide.
How to Take Screenshots on Other Devices
Want to take a screenshot on your eReader, gaming device, watch, or car? Here are some tips on how grabbing the display from almost any smart device you can imagine:
For everything else—smart fridges, thermostats, TVs and more—you'll likely need to use the old take a photo of the screen trick.
12 of the Best Screenshot Apps
Want more from your screenshots—perhaps a quick way to share screenshots instantly or add annotations? Here are some of the best tools to take great screenshots on your computer:
How to Edit Screenshots
There are a few tools in common photo editing apps you should keep handy when editing screenshots:
Put Your Screenshots to Work
Now that you can capture professional-grade screenshots, it's time to use them for more than just saving funny images from Facebook. Here are some ideas for putting your screenshots to work, inspired by how we use them at Zapier.
Have a favorite screenshot app or trick? We'd love to hear about it in the comments below!
Originally published March 17, 2017; updated September 4, 2017 and August 8, 2018 with updated steps to take screenshots on every device, along with new app pricing and features.
Snipping Tool is a nifty utility that allows you to take screenshots of any part on Windows computer screen. It offers four screenshot modes for you: Free-form snip, Rectangular snip, Window snip and Full-screen snip. And you can also edit the screenshot briefly after capturing it. Its image editor gives you a highlighter, various colored pens and an eraser. After editing, you can save the screenshot as an image file in formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF and HTML file.
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This utility is indeed a very handy tool for Windows users. However, Windows is not the only operating system for computers. There is also a large number of people using Mac OS X. And they must also be in need of a Snipping Tool on Mac. In this case, some of the best choices are given in the following.
1. Apowersoft Mac Screenshot
This is a light-weight screen capture tool especially designed for Mac users. It allows you to capture any region on the screen like Snipping Tool on Windows. When you’ve taken a screenshot with this tool, an image editor will pop up. Then you can annotate the image with lines, arrows, texts, circles, etc. After that, you can save the screenshot to your local disk or just upload it directly to the free cloud space. Every image uploaded in this way will be hosted on an individual page with the links readily to share. It is indeed a pretty handy tool for taking screenshot in Apple computers. Here are the steps for you to create a screenshot on Mac with this tool.
Download Screenshot Tool
Tips: Alternatively, instead of saving it on your local disk, you can also upload it to the free cloud space provided by the developer. Once, it’s uploaded, you will get links to the screenshot, which are useful for embedding the image in forums and blogs.
2. Grab
It can be said that Grab is a built-in free Snipping tool for Mac designed by Apple Inc. It has four screenshot modes for you to choose: Selection, Window, Screen and Timed Screen. After taking screenshot, it also provides an image editor for you to crop and annotate the image. When you are done, you can save the screenshot to a folder on your Mac in TIFF, PNG or PDF formats.
Screen Capture And Editing Software For Mac3. Skitch
Skitch is a well-known screen capture program created by Evernote. It is capable of taking multiple screenshots easily without any hassles on Mac OS X. It also has functions of editing and sharing. This program can be a good Snipping Tool alternative for Mac due to the fact that it can not only capture screenshots, but also provides more functions than the Windows Snipping Tool does, such as various image annotation and sharing options.
4. JingFree Photo Editing Tool For Mac
Jing is another effective screenshot tool on Mac that makes sharing screenshots, animations and small video recordings of your screen a piece of cake. With Jing, you can capture any part of your screen, including application windows, whole screen and selected areas. Once a screenshot is captured, you can edit it with some basic elements like lines, arrows and texts. Aside from that, it also allows you to upload the screenshot to you account on Screencast.com. However, the annotation options are simple and the recording function is limited to 5 minutes.
5. Monosnap
Monosnap is still another free Snipping Tool for Mac that allows for quick and easy image and video captures of your screen. Like Snipping Tool, it allows you to capture (as well as timed capture) the entire screen, a selected window, or any desired portion of the screen. Featuring an 8x magnifier, it allows for precise cropping and also has customization ability with its screenshot hotkeys. You can annotate your captures using basic tools and even cover private information using the software’s blur tool. It also provides free cloud storage for its registered users.
6. TinyGrabFree Screen Capture And Editing Software For Mac
TinyGrab is a simple yet highly effective Snipping Tool on Mac that takes advantage of the platform’s inherent screenshot functionalities to capture screen images. After that, screenshots are quickly uploaded to a web server which enables you to share your captured screen with a small and convenient URL. TinyGrab is famous for its lightweight, unobtrusive and fast response service that can be free or premium (costing 10 pounds).
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As you can see, there is a number of excellent candidates for the best Snipping tool alternatives on Mac. You can download any of the tools mentioned above. But it is highly recommended that you use Apowersoft Mac Screenshot because of the powerful functions and free cloud space it provides.
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