How to screenshot on Surface Go

The thin and lightweight design of Microsoft Surface Go together with an affordable price, make it’s the most compelling Surface device to most consumers. Despite its small footprint, it has many great features you can find on its big brother, The new Surface Pro. That includes the new 165° full friction kickstand, Windows Hello support, Surface Connect port, LTE option, and rounded edge design.

If you are new to the Surface device family, you might can’t figure out how to take a screenshot on Surface Go especially when you’re using it as a tablet. In fact, Microsoft Surface Go with Windows 10 installed, has many methods to do more than just taking a screenshot. Read on to find out what is the best method for you.

Table of contents

Method 1: Screenshot on Surface Go with hardware buttons
Method 2: Screenshot on Surface Go with Surface Go Type Cover
Method 3: Screenshot on Surface Go with Surface Pen
Method 4: Screenshot on Surface Go with Windows Snipping Tool
Method 5: Screenshot on Surface Go with Snip & Sketch Tool
Method 6: Screenshot on Surface Go with Shortcut Keys

1 Method 1: Screenshot on Surface Go with hardware buttons

This method is useful when you are using your Surface in a tablet mode without connecting to the type cover. To take a screenshot on Surface Go using hardware buttons, do the following steps:

Press and hold the Power button.
While you hold down the Power button, press and release the Volume Up button on the side of the device.

The screen will dim and back to bright again to let you know, a screenshot is recorded.

Note All screenshots you took with this method, will be saved in a folder named Screenshots under Pictures library.

2 Method 2: Screenshot on Surface Go with Surface Go Type Cover

If you have a Surface Type Cover attached, you can follow the traditional ways to take screenshots by using the dedicated PrtSn (Print Screen) key on the keyboard. To do so.

Option 1: Capturing all entire screens and store in the Windows Clipboard.

Press PrtSn key to taking a screenshot.
Paste to your preferred programs like Paint or Word.

Option 2: Capturing just the active window and store in the Windows Clipboard.

Press Alt + PrtSn key to taking a screenshot of the active window.
Paste to your preferred programs like Paint or Word.

3 Method 3: Screenshot on Surface Go with Surface Pen

Surface Pen has been developed and getting much better functions in Windows 10. In Windows 10 anniversary update, there is a new feature called Screen sketch. This function will capture the device’s screen and pop up with tools for drawing, cropping, and others.

You can take a screenshot by using the Surface Pen with this function. To activate the screen sketch function

Double-click the eraser button on the top of your Surface Pen.
Now you can edit, crop, and save the screenshot by click on the “Save as” button on top right of the screen.

4 Method 4: Screenshot on Surface Go with Windows Snipping Tool

In Windows, there is a built-in screenshot program called Snipping tool that has more controls and functionalities than the above methods. To open this tool:

Open the Start menu and type “Snipping Tool”, or you can type into Cortana textbox directly.
You can also open this tool by opening the Start menu and locate the Snipping Tool under Windows Accessories folder.

When you launched the tool, you can take a screenshot in 4 ways such as Full desktop, specific program windows, any size of rectangle shape, and any form you draw manually.

After you select an area you want to take a screenshot, it will display in a new window. You can draw or highlight on the screenshot before saving them. This tool allows you to save the screenshot as a JPEG, PNG, GIF, or HTML file as your desire.

5 Method 5: Screenshot on Surface Go with Snip & Sketch Tool

In recent Windows 10 Updates, Microsoft has introduced a new modern tool called Snip & Sketch that allows you to quickly annotate screenshots, photos and other images with your pen, touch, or mouse and save, paste or share with other apps. To take a screenshot with this tool:

Open the Start menu and type “Snip & Sketch”, or you can type into Cortana textbox directly. You can also open this tool by opening the Start menu and locate the Snip & Sketch app.
When the tool launched, click New, and click Snip now.
Select an area you want to capture.
The captured image will appear in a new Snip & Sketch window. At this point, you can annotate, draw, or highlight whatever you want on the screenshot.
Click Save icon to save the screenshot to a file. Or click Copy icon to copy the screenshot to Windows clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere.

6 Method 6: Screenshot on Surface Go with Shortcut Keys

There is another quicker way to activate the Snip & Sketch tool by using Windows 10 shortcut keys. To do that:

On your keyboard, press and hold Windows key & Shift key and then press and release the S key.
It will launch the Snip & Sketch tool with the screen clipping mode, so you can select and capture any area you want immediately.
Now you can annotate, draw, or highlight the screenshot within the tool.
Click Save icon to save the screenshot to a file. Or click Copy icon to copy the screenshot to Windows clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere

Those are the six ways you can take a screenshot on your Surface Go. What is your favorite one? Or do you have any other ways? Share with us in the comment section below.