Snippet

Screenshot on Windows 11

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Screen Shot on Windows 11

How to take a screenshot without any extra software

  • Pressing Windows key + Shift + S will bring up the Snip & Sketch App
  • Pick from the 4 choices – Rectangular Snip, Freeform Snip, Windows Snip, or Fullscreen Snip
  • Click on what you want to screen shot
  • Use the Notification Area in Windows 11 to view, edit and save your screen shot.

Although you can still use the Print Screen button to take a screenshot of everything you can see across all monitors, or Alt + Print Screen to take a screenshot, this will purely add that image to the clipboard. You’ll then need to paste it somewhere to have a copy of it to work with and save.

Snipping tool provides a few more handy functions compared to Print Screen, and you don’t have to open the program to use it, you can just use the key combo Windows logo key + Shift + S all at the same time.

Once you’ve taken a screenshot, it will immediately be available on the clipboard too, so you’re able to paste it straight into a document, email or anywhere else that will accept clipboard images.

You can also just launch Snipping tool to use the ‘New’ button, after selecting what sort of screen shot you want – Rectangle mode, WIndow mode, Full-screen mode or Free-form mode.

Also, if you’re wondering – is it ‘Screen Shot’ or ‘Screenshot’ – both are acceptable according to dictionary.com.

Screen Sharing to a TV

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Screen Sharing on Windows 10

Screen sharing is easy to do on Windows, as long as you have a cable.

  1. Click on the Notification icon in the bottom right of the Start bar, next to the time.
  2. In the notification section that pops out, click the ‘Project’ button. If you don’t see it, try clicking the word ‘Expand’ first to show more icons.
  3. From the Project options, either choose ‘Duplicate’ to show the same on the external screen as your PC screen, or Extend to treat the external screen as a second monitor.

Applies To: Windows 10

If you’re using a cable (generally HDMI), screen sharing to a TV is easy – it’s really treating the TV as another monitor. However, if you’re trying to do it wirelessly, there’s a lot more factors going on.

There is no single standard for having a wireless display. This is why extra hardware or software is required to wirelessly transmit your video to a TV. One of the most well known ways is via Chromecast, as a lot of TVs have this built in. From the PC side, you’ll need to have the Google Chrome browser installed and follow these instructions.

Alternatively, if you have an Xbox One or newer, you can use the Wireless Display app to broadcast from your Windows PC or Android device, to the Xbox itself, which if plugged into your TV will use that as the video output.

If you’re interested in more details around Cast, Project or DNLA options, there’s a great post here from Microsoft Answers.

Display Settings in Windows

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Where are Display Settings on Windows 10

Display Settings on Windows 10 are easy to find.

On the desktop background itself, right click with your mouse. The menu that pops up will contain the option ‘Display settings’.

From this screen, you can set many settings such as the arrangement of your displays, screen resolution, and which screen is your main display.

Applies To: Windows 10

Display Settings seem to be a frequent point of confusion. Relating physical problems and changes to choices in software seems to be harder than it sounds, but here’s some tips on the Display Settings on Windows 10 that might help:

Even though it actually says what to for rearranging your displays, you may not realise that you can click and drag your monitors around. Ideally, the screen should match how they are physically – this is so Windows knows where to put the cursor when you scroll from one screen to another. If you have one screen a bit lower than the other (common if you have different sized screens) then make that screen also sit lower on this view, and you won’t have the problem where you think the cursor is stuck, or jumps way off from where you thought it would go when jumping from screen to screen.

The Night light option is good if you’re working in the evening – just like most mobile phones do these days, it will reduce eye strain by looking at a less bright, and display warmer colours to help you get ready to sleep. You can also go into the Night light settings to adjust the strength of the setting:

Display resolution should probably stay on the recommended setting, as Windows is detecting the monitor’s default resolution. The resolution being showed is based on what monitor is highlighted under the ‘Rearrange your displays’ section at the top, so you’ll need to highlight each monitor then check the ‘Display resolution’ setting after that, as each monitor can have it’s own different resolution.

Finally, if you think some things look blurry on your screen and can’t get the monitor’s settings to fix it, you can try going into ‘Advanced scaling settings’ and turn on the option for ‘Let Windows try to fix apps so they’re not blurry’.

How To Reset Your PC

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Reset Your PC

You can Reset your PC if you’re experiencing problems and want to start afresh

  1. Click on ‘Start’
  2. Choose ‘Settings’ – the cog image near the ‘Start’ button
  3. In the ‘Windows Settings’ screen, choose ‘Update & Security’
  4. In the left menu options, choose ‘Recovery’
  5. Under ‘Reset this PC’ choose the ‘Get started’ button

Applies To: Windows 10

Resetting your Windows 10 computer is an easy task to do these days. Going through the above options will trigger the Reset this PC wizard.

If you don’t have administrative access to the device, you’ll first be prompted for those credentials.

Once you have access, you’ll be presented with two choices:

Keep my files – this will leave your files on the device. You ‘should’ be using something like OneDrive to back up all your personal files, and you should back up everything you care about before running a ‘Reset your PC’, but if you’re not sure, and you’re keeping the device for yourself, then this is the safe option.

Remove everything – this is good if you want to start from scratch, or are giving the device to somebody else, as nothing is saved beyond Windows 10 itself.

The wizard will then confirm the option you chose, and after clicking ‘Next’, the process will start. This can take a while depending on the speed of the hardware; but at the end of it, you’ll have a fresh Windows 10 to set up again!

How To Log Off Using Windows 10

Posted on by Adam Fowler

How To Log Off Using Windows 10

  1. Click on the ‘Start’ button in the bottom left of your screen.
  2. Click the ‘Account’ button (which might be your own logo or picture. or just a grey circle with a circle and half circle inside it).
  3. Click ‘Sign Out’.
  4. You’ll now log off and be back on the Windows 10 login screen. Note that this isn’t rebooting your computer.

Applies To: Windows 10

Log Off

It can be a bit hard to find the ‘Sign out’ option in Windows 10 if you don’t know where to look.

The regular ‘Start’ > ‘Power’ option by default doesn’t present a ‘Sign out’ or ‘Log off’ option which people may be used to from older versions of Windows:

There’s also another trick; you can right click on the Start button (or press Win key + X) to bring up the Quick Access menu, which includes a ‘Shut down or sign out’ option, and within that, you can Sign out, Sleep, Shut down or Restart:

You can even open the Run window by using Win key + R, and type the command ‘Shutdown /r /t 0’ to Shut down the computer and restart (/r), and do it now (/t 0 is time, zero seconds):