Knowing the process of taking a screenshot on a Chromebook can definitely come in handy, whether you use yours for work, for school, or for any other personal reasons. Taking screen grabs is a basic function of any decent computer system and for traditional PCs, this process is an inherent part of the keyboard through the print screen key. However, doing this on a Chromebook might not be so obvious to everyone who uses the device.
Since Google has included full screengrab features, something which is very similar to Macs, all that you really need to know to do is learn how to screenshot on a Chromebook. Here is a guide that will assist you with the process.
Taking a screenshot with the whole screen
The easiest and most common way to take a screenshot with a Chromebook is to take the whole screen, which your Chromebook can do very easily.
- Press the Ctrl + show windows key. If you are confused about what the latter is, it is the function key with the rectangle and two trailing lines, and on the keyboard, it can be found between the full-screen and reduce brightness keys.
- After you have tapped on these two keys, ChromeOS, which is the operating system that Chromebooks run on will show you a notification with the message that the grab has been taken. It will also show you what the screenshot looks like. This display screenshot will appear for around 10 seconds before clearing itself automatically. It will also tell you the date and time at which the screenshot was taken.
Taking a screenshot with part of the screen
- Press the Ctrl + Shift + show window keys. The mouse cursor will change and turn into a crosshair, which looks a lot like a + sign. This will enable you to draw a rectangle around the area on your screen that you would like to capture.
- Another method to easily capture part of the screen is to tap on the Ctrl + Alt+ show window keys, and the next window you click on will be captured as part of a screenshot.
An alternative method to take a screenshot on a Chromebook (in a situation where your device does not have the aforementioned function keys, although this is highly unlikely) is to simply press on the power button and volume down keys at the same time.
Another method is to use the Chrome browser menu. Navigate to the menu, and choose Menu > More tools > Screenshot. However, you cannot use the Menu function to grab a cropped area of your screen.
