Phenquestions
Till Windows 7, we had to rely upon third-party tools to capture the current window or screen snapshot called screenshots, but with Windows 10 or Windows 8, taking screenshots isn't an issue. To capture the whole screen at once, you need to just press Windows Key + PrintScreen or Windows Key + Fn + PrintScreen key combination on the keyboard. While capturing screenshots, your laptop dims, and then you can find the screenshot captured in the Screenshots folder under the Pictures library.
But what if you press the above-mentioned keyboard combinations, Windows captures the screenshot, but it is not being saved. This will, of course, disappoint you, but if it is really important, you can just open Paint (native image editor in Windows) and press Ctrl + V (paste), and you'll now see the captured screenshot inside Paint in editing mode - which you can save as an image in your desired format. Anyway, let's stick to the topic and find out how to fix the issue so that Windows can save the screenshots directly inside the Pictures library.
Windows 10 not saving captured Screenshots in Pictures folder
1. Create a system restore point first and then press Windows Key + R combination, type put Regedt32.exe in the Run dialog box and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
3. In the right pane of this location look for the ScreenshotIndex named DWORD (REG_DWORD).
Since you're facing the issue of screenshots not being saved, you'll find this DWORD missing.
To create the same using Right-click -> New -> DWORD Value. Double click on the same DWORD to modify its Value data.
4. In the above-shown box, first, select the Decimal base and then input the Value data as 695. Click OK.
Now to point out this registry DWORD to correct user profile settings, you should check out the User Shell Folders entry inside Registry Editor. So move here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
5. In the right pane of this location, click on the B7BEDE81-DF94-4682-A7D8-57A52620B86F entry which is an expandable string (REG_EXPAND_SZ). Make sure it points to the following Value data:
%USERPROFILE%\Pictures\Screenshots
After confirming the Value data, you can close the Registry Editor and reboot. Now, try to capture screenshots, you'll observe that screenshots got saved where they should be, means the issue has been resolved.
NOTE: Please also read the comments below for more ideas.
Check this post if you want to change Print Screen folder location in Windows.
