How To Take a Screenshot On Steam

Every so often in a game, you’ll come across something you want to capture and remember. Maybe you completed a difficult achievement, found rare in-game content, or just want to show off some high-quality graphics. 

Steam, the popular PC video game launcher, gives you a way to take screenshots while you’re playing and share them immediately with your friends. You can either share it directly on your profile, or on social media like Facebook or Twitter. 

It’s very easy to take a screenshot on Steam. There are just a few things you need to make sure to do beforehand, and some tips to remember to make sure you get a really stellar screenshot. 

Change Your Steam Settings 

The first thing you’ll need to do is make sure you have the Steam overlay enabled when you play a game through Steam. To do this, open Steam and navigate to the top-left and click on Steam > Settings > In-Game. 

From here, you’ll see a few options for taking screenshots. But first, make sure the Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game option is checked off. This is needed for Steam to take and save your screenshots.

You’ll see the Screenshot shortcut keys option just below that to the right. You can change the shortcut keys to anything you want, and by default it’s set to F12. Right below this you’ll also see the Screenshot Folder button. Click this to choose where your screenshots are saved on your computer. 

Finally, you can choose what happens when a screenshot is taken. You can select to have a notification, have a sound play, and save an uncompressed copy of the image. Once you’re happy with your screenshot settings, click OK. 

Take Your Screenshot In-Game

Now you can launch whatever game you’re going to take a screenshot in. Make sure you launch it through the Steam platform. When you want to take a screenshot, press the shortcut keys you selected earlier. 

If you elected to have a notification or sound play, you should notice that when you take the screenshot. If not, you can check if Steam took the picture when you upload it. 

Press the keys you’ve set to bring up your Steam overlay. By default, this is set to Shift+Tab. Once in the overlay, you’ll see a Screenshots section in the bottom left corner. Click on View Screenshots to open up the screenshot window. 

At the top of this window, you’ll see you can select to view screenshots from your current session, or from a previous game you have screenshots saved in. You can check here to make sure your images were taken correctly. 

When you find the screenshot(s) you wish to upload to Steam, click on it and you’ll see you can add a caption, or tag it as a spoiler. You can also select every screenshot you’ve taken by clicking Select All. In the bottom right are options to either delete or upload. 

When you click on Upload, you’ll open a window to choose some upload options. You can set the visibility of the screenshot to Public, Friends Only, or Private by clicking the visibility dropdown. You can also choose to share the screenshot to Facebook. 

By clicking Upload, your screenshot will be saved to the Steam Cloud. 

Manage Your Steam Screenshots

You can now view the screenshots you’ve taken through Steam and uploaded to your profile. To see them, you can either go to Your Account Name > Content > Screenshots or Your Account Name > Profile and find the Screenshots button in the right-hand side panel. 

On this page, you’ll be able to manage how you and others can view the screenshots you’ve uploaded. On the top, underneath the navigation bar, you’ll be able to choose either Grid or Image Wall view. You can also choose to see the newest screenshots first, oldest first, or most popular. Finally, in this bar, you can choose to view all your screenshots, or only your public, private, friends only, or unlisted screenshots. 

If you want to upload more screenshots, you can click the Upload screenshots… button to open the same screenshot window you accessed in the Steam Overlay to choose more pictures to upload. 

You can also edit the visibility of your screenshots by clicking the Manage screenshots button. Then, select which screenshots you want to change the visibility of and select Done. 

Share Your Screenshots to Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit

Besides being able to share your screenshots to Facebook in-game, you can also do so in your profile’s screenshots section, as well as being able to share them to Twitter, Reddit, or other social platforms. 

Click on one of your screenshots and a larger image of it will open. On the right side, you’ll see where you can like or dislike it. You can also add comments. 

Furthest to the right, you’ll see a gear icon. Click this to see options to Share or Favorite the image. You can also select Follow or Report, but these are for when viewing others screenshots. 

Select Share to open the sharing window. You can choose to share the image to your Steam activity feed, where it’ll show up on your profile and to others who are able to see your feed. There are also buttons to share it to Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. When you click one of these it’ll automatically take you to the site to post it.

You’ll also find a link to your screenshot at the bottom of the window, so you can share it to any other platform you wish.