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Using Alt+Print on the keyboard, a screenshot of the currently active window is copied to the clipboard.

Unfortunately, on Windows 10 this also takes the area of the window's shadow into the screenshot:

enter image description here

As you can see, above image is a screenshot of the "Run" dialog box which also has the background of the shadow areas left, right and bottom shine through.

This is what I would expect:

enter image description here

Above image is manually modified and omits the shadow areas, showing only the actual window area.

What I've tried:

I've tried the Snipping Tool and it works as expected, i.e. it does not include the shadow areas.

What bothers me is that it is way more complicated to use the Snipping Tool compared to a simple Alt+Print.

My question:

Is it possible with built-in keyboard shortcuts of Windows 10 to have a screenshot that does exclude the shadow areas?

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  • 3
    You should post your solution as an answer instead of putting it in the question itself.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 12:00
  • 2
    You don't have to accept your answer, of course, your question is limited to keyboard shortcut solutions, and there is only one correct answer.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 12:03
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    Alternatively, tools like puush and shareX will do this with a "capture current window" hotkey.
    – Seiyria
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 14:03
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    My desktop running build 10240 takes shadowless screenshots with Alt+PrtScr just fine. Judging by the colored title bars in your screenshots, this looks to me like a bug with 10532.
    – BoltClock
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 16:20
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    Notice also how it doesn't even capture the shadow properly - the top part seems to be completely missing, and the sides and bottom aren't nearly wide enough to contain the full shadow size. For comparison, here's the same dialog captured using Shotty on build 10240, which accurately replicates the actual shadows rendered by the DWM. Pretty sure this is buggy behavior.
    – BoltClock
    Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 3:17

1 Answer 1

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Out of curiosity I've tried Shift+Alt+Print and it works!

I.e. when using the Shift key, the shadow area is omitted in the screenshot:

enter image description here

Update:

I'm using the latest "Fast Ring" version of Windows 10; maybe this is a feature they added recently in this version?

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  • 4
    Does Left Shift + Left Alt + Print Screen still trigger a prompt offering to turn on the High Contrast accessibility option in Win10?
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 14:27
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    @DanNeely Yes it does. Looks like you need to use either Right Shift or Right Alt to prevent that from coming up.
    – Jesan Fafon
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 16:08
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    The shift key is unnecessary - Alt + Print Screen will take a screenshot of the currently focussed window without the shadow.
    – Sly_cardinal
    Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 1:30
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    If it is indeed a new feature, then I'm seriously disappointed that Microsoft didn't fix this all the way back in Windows 7. It seems kind of pointless to do it only now when all the transparency and rounded corners are gone and we're back to rectangles with sharp corners that don't look funny when captured with Alt+PrtScr.
    – BoltClock
    Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 3:26
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    Confirmed, this was the same in Windows 7. I just tried left-shift, right-alt and print-screen together on Win7 and it silently copies to clipboard a shadow-free screenshot of the current window (although things behind the translucent aero stuff, and black pixels around the rounded bottom corners, are still visible). Left-shift, left-alt and print-screen pops up the "high contrast" option. Never knew about this...
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 19:17

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