How to take a screenshot on a Chromebook

The short answer

• Whole screen: Ctrl + Show windows. Show windows is the key in the top row where a PC keyboard has F5.
• An area or one window: Shift + Ctrl + Show windows opens the screen capture toolbar. Choose Screenshot, then Partial or Window. If your keyboard has a Screenshot key, it opens the same toolbar.
• The file: saved to the Downloads folder and copied to the clipboard, so Ctrl + V pastes it straight into a document, a chat or an email.

Every way to take a screenshot, in one table

Google lists these routes in Take a screenshot or record your screen and in its Chromebook keyboard shortcuts.

Whatever the route, the file goes to Downloads and a copy goes to the clipboard.

Screenshot one window or part of the screen

1. Press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows (or the Screenshot key).
2. Check that Screenshot is selected, not Screen record.
3. For one window, choose Window and click the window you want. You get that window and nothing around it: no shelf, no clock, nothing to crop afterwards.
4. For an area, choose Partial and drag a box over the part you want. Drag the corners to adjust it before you take the picture.

Without a mouse or touchpad, Google's controls are: Space to change the selection, Tab to move between the corners, and the arrow keys to change the height and width.

If the screenshot goes into a guide, Window or Partial beats full screen almost every time. How tight to crop and what to mark is covered in Screenshots in documentation.

Screen record on a Chromebook

1. Press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows and switch from Screenshot to Screen record.
2. Choose full screen, partial or window.
3. Open the toolbar's settings if you need them: the front camera, audio from the device, the microphone or both, and Show clicks and keys, which shows your clicks and key presses in the video.
4. Start recording. To stop, select the stop button or press Search + Shift + X.

Recordings are saved as .webm video. A partial recording can also be saved as a .gif, which is handy for a short loop in a chat, but a GIF captures no audio and no camera input.

Where screenshots are saved and how to find them

• Downloads: open the Files app and select Downloads. To save somewhere else, open the toolbar's settings and choose Select folder.
• The clipboard: each screenshot and recording is copied there as it is taken. Paste with Ctrl + V.
• Earlier captures: Search + V (Launcher + V, depending on the keyboard) opens the clipboard menu, so you can paste a screenshot you took a few copies ago.

Downloads fills up fast. If you keep screenshots, rename them for what they show while you still remember.

When the shortcut does nothing

No Show windows key on the keyboard

A Windows or other external keyboard has no Show windows key. Press Ctrl + Shift + F5 for the toolbar, or select the time at the bottom of the screen and then Screen capture.

A school or work Chromebook

The administrator can turn screenshots off. Chrome's DisableScreenshots policy, set to "Do not allow users to take screenshots or video recordings", blocks the keyboard shortcuts and extensions that take screenshots. No key combination gets around it. If you need screenshots for your work, ask the school's or company's IT team.

The Screenshot key opens a toolbar instead of saving

That is how it works: the Screenshot key and Shift + Ctrl + Show windows open the toolbar and wait for your choice. For an immediate picture of the whole screen, use Ctrl + Show windows.

Capturing a browser task without 15 screenshots

Many people who search for this are documenting something: how to change a setting in an admin panel, how a new starter fills in a form. The screenshots are the quick part. Then come 15 files in Downloads to rename, crop, mark with a circle where you clicked, number, paste into a document in the right order and write a sentence beside. When the app changes, part of it starts again.

Two ways to cut that work:

• Fewer pictures. Take a screenshot only where the reader has to find something on the screen, as a Window or Partial capture, and write the other steps as sentences. The rules for those sentences are in How to write step-by-step instructions.
• A click recorder. A Chrome extension that takes a screenshot at each click in a tab and writes it up as a numbered step with a marker on what was clicked. On a Chromebook it covers what happens inside Chrome tabs; ChromeOS settings and Android apps are outside a browser extension's reach, so those steps still need the shortcuts above. Check where it keeps your screenshots: some tools upload every capture to their own servers.

Screenshot shortcuts on one page

The shortcuts for Windows 11, the Mac and a Chromebook, and the steps for a full page in Chrome, fit on one printable sheet: PDF, A4, PDF, US Letter or Markdown for a wiki. Each shortcut on it is the one stated, with its source, in the guide for that system.

Sources