We’ve all been there: you need a physical copy of something on your screen—a confirmation page, an error message, a travel itinerary, or a recipe. But printing your laptop screen isn’t always as simple as hitting .

Pro Tip for Mac Users: If you want to skip saving the file, press . This copies the image to your clipboard, allowing you to paste it directly into a Word document or email to print.

By default, Macs save the screenshot as a file on your desktop (labeled with the date and time).

For most people, the best workflow is: Capture → Paste → Crop → Print

Here is how to do it quickly and easily on both Windows and macOS.