How to change where screenshots are saved on Windows

Right-click Pictures\Screenshots, choose Properties → Location → Move, and pick a new folder. Snipping Tool and OneDrive have their own save settings.

Windows saves screenshots taken with Win+PrtScn, and on Windows 11 the snips Snipping Tool saves automatically, to Pictures\Screenshots. To change that folder, open File Explorer, right-click the Screenshots folder, choose Properties, open the Location tab, click Move…, pick the new folder, and click Apply. Recent versions of Snipping Tool also have their own setting (See more (…) → Settings → Screenshots are saved to → Change), and if OneDrive is set to save your screenshots, they go to OneDrive\Pictures\Screenshots instead.

The built-in way

Move the Screenshots folder

Create the folder you want to use, for example D:\Pictures\Screenshots.
Open File Explorer, type shell:Screenshots in the address bar and press Enter. That opens the current Screenshots folder, wherever it lives.
Go up one level, right-click Screenshots and choose Properties.
On the Location tab, click Move…, select the folder from step 1, and click Apply.
Windows asks whether to move the files already there. Say Yes if you want your old screenshots to come along.

To undo it, come back to the same tab and click Restore Default. The change applies to your user account only. Pick a dedicated folder rather than a system one like the Desktop itself: pointing the Screenshots folder directly at another special folder causes confusion that’s tedious to untangle.

Snipping Tool’s own setting

On Windows 11, Snipping Tool saves every snip automatically (as well as copying it), and Win+Shift+S and, by default, PrtScn both go through it. In recent versions, open Snipping Tool, click See more (…) → Settings, and under Screenshots are saved to click Change. The same settings page controls whether snips are saved automatically at all. If you don’t see the option, update Snipping Tool from the Microsoft Store.

On Windows 10, Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch don’t save automatically: you choose Save and a location for each snip, and PrtScn copies the screen to the clipboard without saving a file.

OneDrive

If OneDrive’s screenshot option is on, screenshots are also saved to OneDrive\Pictures\Screenshots and uploaded. To change that, click the OneDrive icon in the taskbar, then the gear → Settings, and in recent versions look under Sync and backup for Save screenshots I capture to OneDrive. The labels have moved around between OneDrive versions, so look for that wording. Separately, if OneDrive backs up your Pictures folder, the Screenshots folder lives inside OneDrive anyway.

Game Bar

Screenshots taken with Xbox Game Bar (Win+Alt+PrtScn) are a separate case: they go to Videos\Captures, and their location is managed separately from the Screenshots folder.

The catch

That’s three or four places to check, and the answer to “where did my screenshot go?” depends on which key you pressed. Everything that does get saved is a flat PNG. Annotate it in Snipping Tool, save it, and the pen strokes are pixels from then on.

With hypershot

hypershot has one folder and one setting. Every capture you take with hypershot, such as a region with Ctrl+Shift+3, is saved automatically as an editable .hypercapture file in Pictures\hypershot. It doesn’t use the Windows Screenshots folder, Snipping Tool’s setting, or OneDrive’s.

To change it:

Click the hypershot icon in the system tray and choose Settings.
Open the General tab.
Under Save directory, click Browse… and pick the folder.

New captures are saved there from then on. If you want them synced, point it at a folder inside OneDrive. The preferences docs cover the rest of the tab.

A .hypercapture keeps the annotations editable and the frame history scrubbable, so you can reopen a capture weeks later and move the arrow. File Explorer shows each one as a thumbnail of the capture itself, in every view from Extra Large Icons to Details (hypercapture files).

hypershot 2026-10-09 14-32-11.hypercapture

When you need a plain image somewhere specific:

Export Image… (Ctrl+E in the editor) asks for a location, a name and a format: PNG, JPEG, and WebP, TIFF or BMP where Windows can write them. See Save to file.
Save As… on a card in the preview folder writes a PNG, JPEG or WebP wherever you choose, without opening the editor (capture history).
Reveal in Explorer on a card shows you the .hypercapture file itself.

Or skip files for quick shots: set Settings → Captures → After capture to Only Copy and each capture goes straight to the clipboard.

Tips

Want hypershot on PrtScn? Assign it in Settings → Shortcuts. If Windows has PrtScn opening Snipping Tool, hypershot tells you which Windows setting to turn off (hotkeys).
Lost track of a capture? Ctrl+Shift+H shows hypershot’s preview folder of recent captures. Where do my screenshots go? has the full tour.
Moving the Windows Screenshots folder doesn’t affect hypershot, and changing hypershot’s save directory doesn’t affect Windows. They’re independent on purpose.