How to enable sound alert for screenshots on Windows 10
Windows 10 allows users to take a screenshot with the Win+PrintScrn keyboard shortcut. This feature saves a full-screen screenshot to the Pictures library, and when the screenshot is captured, the screen flashes to indicate that a screenshot has been taken. If you’re not a fan of the screen flashing and would instead like a sound alert, you can enable it.
The only catch is, the sound alert will work for the PrintScreen key and not the Win+PrntScrn keyboard shortcut. If you want the sound to also work for the Win+PrntScrn shortcut, you will have to choose between using either one of them. If you use a third-party screenshot tool that uses the PrntScrn key to take screenshots, the audio alert will play when you use it.
Sound alert for screenshot
In order to create a sound alert for screenshots taken when you tap the PrntScrn key, you have to edit the registry.
- Tap the Win+R keyboard shortcut to open the Run box.
- In the Run box, enter ‘regedit’, and tap the Enter key.
- Go to the following key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default
- Right-click the .Default key and select New>Key
- Name the value SnapShot.
- Tap the Win+R keyboard shortcut to open the Run box.
- Enter the following in the Run box, and tap Enter.
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL mmsys.cpl ,2
- In the Program Events list, scroll through the Windows events and find Notifications. Look for Snapshot under it.
- Select Snapshot and open the ‘Sounds’ dropdown.
- Select one of the preset sounds that are available on Windows 10. If you’d like to use a custom sound for the screenshot, you should download it and convert it to the WAV format and select it from the Sounds dropdown.
- Click Apply.
- When you tap the PrntScrn key, the sound will play.
Sound alert for Win+PrntScrn
If you’d like for the sound to play when the Win+Prntscrn keyboard is tapped, you will have to use an AutoHotKey script to do the job.
- Open Notepad.
- Paste the following in the file.
~PrintScreen::#PrintScreen
- Save it with the AHK file extension.
- Run the script.
- Tap the Prntscreen key; a screenshot will be captured and saved to the Screenshots folder in Pictures, and you will hear the audio alert that you set up for it.
Conclusion
With the AHK script running, the PrntScrn key will not act like the PrntScrn key. Instead, it will execute the Win+PrntScrn shortcut. If at any time you need the PrntScrn key to act as itself and not execute the Windows screenshot shortcut, simply quit or pause the AHK script that you created.
