There is a new way you can take screenshots in Windows 10 without additional third-party tools! With the latest Creators Update, Microsoft added a new system-wide shortcut to allow you to select a specific area of the screen and copy it to your clipboard.

Press Windows + Shift + S in build 15063 (Windows 10 Creators Update) or later will trigger the gray out overlay that you can use your mouse to click and select a specific area. Once you have selected the area it will get copied to your clipboard, you can then paste the image into an image editor or open paint and save the screenshot from your clipboard.

Back in Windows 7, Microsoft introduced the Snipping Tool which does more or less the same. The slight difference between the Snipping Tool from Windows 7 and this new native method to capture a selective region on the screen is the missing system-wide keyboard shortcut. If you still prefer the Snipping Tool and would like to add a system-wide keyboard shortcut we got a tutorial for you here to follow.

If you are a Mac user, this is VERY much like Shift + Command + 4 on Mac the only difference is you don’t get an image saved at a default(desktop) location. So keep in mind with the new shortcut, you might find it useful and handy when you need to take a screenshot spontaneously.

/update on May 7, 2018/

Microsoft is adding more features to this new screenshot experience for the upcoming major update. In Windows 10 version 1803 build 17661, the new Win + Shift + S keyboard shortcut bring up an area select tool to snip a screenshot and lets you share it instantly from the clipboard.

First of all, there is a new options bar popping up, providing you three different clipping options, rectangular clip, freeform clip, and full-screen.

Then, as soon as you clipped something to the clipboard, a notification will be triggered automatically so you can easily annotate the screenshot by clicking on the notification.