How to take a screenshot to prove you’re not going nuts
Lauren Trimble
Even though we are super amazing at pretty much all things in life, we cannot (yet) see exactly what’s on your computer screen when you write in to us. We try our best to figure out what’s going on based on your description and other information we know about the site, but sometimes, it’s best if we can just see what you’re seeing.
Down below are instructions for taking a screenshot on a PC and Mac, respectively.
PC
- Hold down Alt and press the Print Screen (may look like PrtScn SysRq) at the same time. This will copy everything that’s in your current active window.
- Go to whatever program you’d like to use to paste the image you have. You can paste the image by holding down Ctrl and pressing V.
- Most email clients allow you to paste an image directly into the body of the message, but you can also enter the image into a Microsoft Word (or other word processing program) document. The most popular way to go about it is to open Microsoft Paint and pressing Ctrl + V after you open the program. This way, you can edit the image if you’d like, calling out specific important portions of the image, and you can save the image as a standalone file. The image for Microsoft Paint looks like this in case you’re curious (and you should be because it’s adorable):
Mac
- Hold down Command and Shift at the same time, and then press 4. Let go of these three, press the space bar, and then click on the window you’d like to capture. A file will automatically save to your desktop.
- If you’d rather just copy the image instead of creating a file (this is useful if you’d like to paste it into a document or email message), do all the commands above while holding down the Control button.
- To paste the image into a document or message, click where you want the image to appear and hold Command while pressing V.