“Print Screen” key will work differently in Windows 11

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Microsoft is changing the functioning of the Print Screen (Prt Scr) key in Windows 11. For the first time in decades, the behavior will default to Microsoft’s Snipping Tool instead of capturing an image of your entire screen and copying it to the clipboard. Microsoft started testing this change in the last few beta versions of Windows 11 and it has decided that it will be the default for the upcoming KB5025310 update. If you’re a reluctant adopter, you can easily revert to the regular functioning (Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard: toggle “Use the print screen button to open screen capture”). Microsoft’s decision to default the Print Screen key to the use of its screen snipping tool might be surprising and even annoying, but it’s easy to roll it back. IT admins will be able to control its function on machines in their fleet in the coming months. It’s a small evolution that will work to the advantage of multiscreen users, but it’s no revolution.

For the record, this key has been around since the beginning of microcomputing, back when interfaces were strictly text-based. At the time, pressing the key sent all text displayed to the printer via the standard LPT1 port, unless you specified otherwise. Pressing Ctrl and Prt Scr simultaneously toggled the “echo” mode on and off, which sent any new lines of text on the screen to the printer -- usually a dot-matrix machine that allowed for line-by-line printing.

⇨ The Verge, Tom Warren, “Microsoft is changing the Print Screen key to open its Snipping Tool on Windows 11.”

2023-04-12