Sometimes you need to capture a screenshot and send it to someone, so screenshots are helpful when you are in the middle of any problem and need support by showing what’s happening on your screen. You can save on-screen information with one button click and save as image files like png or jpg. In this guide, you will learn multiple ways to take a screenshot of the whole screen, capture active window only, save screenshots in folder, capture screenshot with a cursor or even you can set the timer to capture and save screenshot automatically after a specific interval.
Multiple Ways to Capturing screenshot in Windows
You can take a screenshot using computer keyboard by pressing the key "prt sc" and by combining the keys "alt+prt sc" you can take a screenshot of an active window only. When you press this key to capture screen, Windows will save the screenshot to the clipboard so you can paste it anywhere in drawing or image editing tool like Windows built-in MSPaint.
Save screenshot to folder instead Clipboard
Instead of sending captured screens to the clipboard you can capture and save screenshots to a specific folder, and keyboard keys combination is different. Just press keys "Windows+prt sc" and the screen shot will be saved as a .png format in Screenshots folder available in the Pictures folder. You can access this folder by opening File Explorer and then select Pictures from left-panel. A quick way to access Pictures folder is just press "Win+R" to open Run window and then type Pictures and hit Enter, here you will see Screenshots folder. Unfortunately, you can’t combine alt key to take active window screenshot.
Capture mouse cursor in the screenshot
Sometime you might be required to capture mouse cursor with the screenshot if this is the case then see how to capture cursor in the screenshot.
Auto Capture Screenshots after a specific interval
Auto Screen Capture is a third-party open source tool available on SourceForge. This utility has some impressive features for capturing screenshots, and compatible with Windows 10, 8 and 7. This simple portable utility or application doesn’t require installation or modify windows registry on your Windows. Just download the .exe file and run it. This utility can capture screenshot automatically from up-to four displays as well.
- Only download
"Auto Screen Capture"and run it. When you see this utility screen, the interface split up into a couple of different sections. At top-left side calendar and at the bottom of calendar you will see settings sections. At the right-side, you have previews of each external display attached to the computer; You can capture screenshot from maximum four displays.
- When you first time run this program, the settings are set as default which means the program is set to Demo mode on and the schedule off. First change these settings, click on Options at bottom-left corner uncheck the “Turn on demo mode at application startup” option. After that check the option “Turn on scheduled screen capturing at application startup”.
- To capture the screenshot at a defined time interval set the time according to your need. But, by default its set to every 1 second which ridicules. This program also set to stop after 30 minutes by default; you can also change it if you want.
- To change the default location of saving the screenshot. Click on browse button at the bottom of the program screen and select the desired path.
- You can also change the image type to BMP, EMF, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and WMF. To start the program with your settings just click “ON” button, and the program will begin to capture the screenshots.
If you know any other method of taking screenshots in Windows, please share with us below in comments.