If your laptop has a dedicated Print Screen key, you can press it to instantly take a screenshot of the screen and save it to the clipboard. You can paste the screenshot into any app like Paint and do whatever you want to. This has always been the default behaviour of the Print Screen key (PrtSc).
KB5025310 is changing the default behaviour for everyone. After installing this or a newer update, your Print Screen key will open the new Snipping Tool. For those unaware, Windows 11’s new Snipping Tool replaces the legacy Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch app and combines the best features.
It’s always strange how even the smallest of changes to Windows can make people upset, so considering the Print Screen key has worked the same way since Windows 95, changing its behaviour is going to make a lot of people unhappy. I honestly think it’s the right move – but if this really upsets you, you can change the behaviour back to the old way.
Fun side note: the name of the key comes from the fact that under e.g. MS-DOS, the Print Screen key would literally print the contents of the screen by sending it the default printer port.
Yeah right. Tell that to the millions, if not billions, who can’t understand why the start menu was replaced with a phone interface, and why the taskbar was replaced with a mac taskbar, without any means to fall back to the sensible.
Windows 11: Change shit because why not Edition.
For historical purposes, I will point out that unlike DOS and the Print screen function dumping the text of the screen to the parallel port… the Coleco Adam would just output to the printer everything you typed until you put it into Word Processing mode! Seriously an oddly, yet pretty cool design of a machine!
In the olden days, most computers would dump all output into a printer before video display terminals became a thing. It’s why Unix tools are so text-file friendly (you can pass their output to a textile just fine).
Ah, the Coleco ADAM–my first computer. You are clearly one of the 439 of us that have actually laid eyes on one. I still have the copy of Programming the Z80 that I used to create my own drawing program on that thing. The “file format” was literally a binary dump of the video buffer ( a bunch of PEEK statements in a loop ).
As you say, the ADAM was a typewriter when you first turned it on. There was not BASIC built-in ( just the Word Processor ). It become a video game console when you put a cartridge in it or programs could be loaded with a Digital Data Pak ( weird proprietary audio cassette looking thing ). The incredibly noisy daisy wheel printer had the power supply for the whole system in it as well and so there was no way to replace it. What a weird and wonderful beast.
I have a lot of nostalgia for the ADAM but I have never been able to bring myself to pay what people are asking for them these days.
I use the PrintScreen key often to easily put grabs into the clipboard and elsewhere from there. I do not want it remapped to open some stupid Microsoft app. Leave what’s not broken alone and focus on the long list of things that are.
Probably going to annoy gamers who like to screenshot.
That’s how I found out about it the other day (and only noticed it has updated since I needed to reinstall a proper GFX driver!)
Took 20 seconds to turn it off. Meh.
While i liked old behaviour more, this new approach may be better for non-tech users. I see in my jobs and private clients, that they don`t know how old way works, so when they`ve pressed Print Screen they thought that this just doesn`t work, because they didn`t saw any action (not all people know, that you have to open other app and paste it there). This goes not only to younger people, that do most jobs on smartphones, but also older non-tech ones.
So while this isn`t practical for me, it`s good way. Users are changing, so OS should go with them, because this 1% geeks that know this damn button can make it anyway.
>Fun side note: the name of the key comes from the fact that under e.g. MS-DOS, the Print Screen key would literally print the contents of the screen by sending it the default printer port.
The Bloomberg Terminal (now a Windows app) still does that… Oh how much paper I’ve wasted accidentally…
Since Windows 95? Didn’t Windows 3.11 implement it the same way as well?
Yeah at least back to 3.0 maybe before… and dos used it for full screen text copy to the printer port.
There are some people that seem to think 3.x can’t do it but they are probably just doing it wrong, as long as you are in windows mode it should take a screenshot to the clipboard. ALT printscreen takes one of the current window to the clipboard.
There is an MS KB article archived here that documents its functionality from 3.0-95 working that way.
https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/060/Q60874/
When I press Print Screen (which has a more contemporary label on my non-80’s centric keyboard), it brings up Spectacle. I couldn’t be happier.
The whole point of a dedicated PrtSn button is the ability to rapidly make a screenshot, not thinking of anything else when needed.
The problem with OldWay is that you need to start another app and then save it.
I would prefer to have PrtSn make a timestamped screenshot in a dedicated folder – to make for a series of screenshots, preferably with some tagging (like a central open app or a webpage address). However, Snipping Tool is still better than fighting with Paint.
That’s annoying but as long as it’s easy to change back whatever. The main reason I use the print screen button is in cases were the snip tool doesn’t work as it takes focus away from something so a menu closes etc.