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How To Find Missing Screenshots in Windows: Effective Solutions

February 11, 2026 3 minutos de lectura Updated: February 11, 2026

Yeah, losing screenshots feels like a small tragedy sometimes. You take that perfect shot or record some info, only to find it vanished into the ether. Sometimes it’s just a matter of Windows not saving them where you expect, or maybe they’re hiding in some weird place because a setting got changed. Fixing it can be smoother than you think, once you understand where they might be hiding and what screws with their saving process. After following these tricks, your screenshots should be back on track, or at least you’ll understand where they might be sneaking off to.

How to Find and Fix Your Missing Screenshots in Windows

Check if Screenshots Are Saved Somewhere Else

This is a common one—Windows defaults to saving screenshots in a specific folder, but sometimes that gets changed. Maybe you or some app fiddled with the save location or it’s set to OneDrive automatically. If you’re not seeing your latest shots, this is the first thing to verify. Sometimes it’s just a matter of switching the save location back to the default.

  • Press Win + I to open the Settings app.
  • Navigate to System > Storage.
  • On the right, click Change where new content is saved.
  • Look under New screenshots will save to. Here’s where Windows is dropping your screenshots. If it’s a different folder, that’s probably why you can’t find them.
  • If needed, change it back to this PC\Pictures\Screenshots or whatever you prefer. Save and try taking a new screenshot to see if it appears there.

Check Your OneDrive Settings

Many folks don’t realize their screenshots are auto-redirected to OneDrive. If you have OneDrive installed, it might automatically upload your screenshots, but you’re looking in the local folder and none are showing up. To check or disable that:

  1. Right-click the OneDrive icon in the system tray and select Settings.
  2. Switch to the Autosave tab.
  3. Uncheck Automatically save screenshots I capture to OneDrive. This stops the screenshots from going directly into your OneDrive collection.

That way, they stay in your local folder unless you choose otherwise. Sometimes, the screenshots end up in your OneDrive folder, but you’re just not looking there.

Remember to Actually Save the Screenshot

This trips people up more than it should—taking a screenshot doesn’t automatically save it as a file unless you hit the right key combo. For instance, pressing PrtSc or Alt + PrtSc copies the image to the clipboard, but you still need to paste it into something like Paint or Photoshop and save it manually.

  • Using Windows key + PrtSc automatically saves a PNG file in the Screenshots folder. That’s the easiest way, but make sure the Fn key isn’t messing with the press if you’re on a laptop.

If you’re on a laptop with a Fn Lock key, toggle it on or off depending on your keyboard setup, so that the PrtSc works as expected.

Search for Your Screenshots

If you remember taking a shot but can’t find the file, just search Windows Explorer:

  • Open File Explorer.
  • Type Screenshot*.png or just Screenshots in the search bar.
  • When it pops up, right-click and choose Open file location — that’ll show the folder where Windows stored it. Sometimes they’re buried in unexpected places.

Check If The PrtSc Key Is Overridden or Not Working

Sometimes a third-party app or a custom key remapper messes with the default PrtSc button. If you use apps like Greenshot, Snagit, or others, check their settings to see if they’re intercepting that key. Also, try pressing Win + PrtSc directly — if it doesn’t do anything, maybe the key is broken or overridden.

On some setups, you might need to assign a different hotkey for that third-party tool or re-enable the default behavior in its settings.

Check Folder Permissions

If you’ve changed permissions on your screenshot folder, Windows might refuse to save files there. To fix that:

  1. Navigate to your Screenshots folder (probably under Pictures).
  2. Right-click it and pick Properties.
  3. Go to the Security tab.
  4. Click Edit and make sure your user account has Full Control enabled. If not, check the box. Sometimes this habitually happens after a permissions update or system changes, and it can block saving new files.

After that, try taking a screenshot again. If it still doesn’t save, maybe it’s worth restarting the PC — because Windows has to make it harder than necessary sometimes.