[FIX] Screen Won’t Dim When You Press Win+PrtScn keys to Save Screenshots in Windows 8 or Later

In older Windows versions such as Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, whenever you needed to share a screenshot of your computer screen or screenshot of a particular program window with others, you had to press PrtScn (Print Screen) key or ALT+PrtScn keys first to capture the whole screen or particular window and then you had to paste the screenshot in an image editing program such as MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, etc to save it as an image.

With the release of Windows 8, Microsoft made taking screenshots a lot easier process. You just need to press WIN+PrtScn keys together and it’ll automatically capture the screen and save it as an image in “Pictures\Screenshots” folder under your Documents folder. This feature is called Auto Save Screenshots or Auto Screen Capture and works in Windows 8 and later Windows versions such as Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 as well.

We have shared more details about this feature in past when Windows 8 was under development and testing phase. You can read more about this and other hidden secret features in following exclusive topic:

Hidden Secret Features and Useful Hotkeys in Windows 8 and Later

But recently I faced a strange issue while using this feature. Actually when you press WIN+PrtScn keys to take screenshot, the screen dims for a second as an indication so that you can be sure that the screenshot has been saved successfully.

Look at the following image which clearly shows screen dim functionality when you press WIN+PrtScn keys:

But suddenly the screen dimming functionality stopped working. Whenever I was pressing WIN+PrtScn keys, although it was taking screenshots and saving them in Screenshots folder but Windows was not showing any indication and the screen was not dimming at all.

That was really an annoying and strange issue. I was having no idea why the screen was not dimming while taking screenshots. Since there was no dim screen indication happening, I was not sure whether the screenshots are saving or not and I was taking several screenshots of the same thing again and again.

After a few minutes investigation, finally I was able to find out the culprit and it was actually a bug in Windows 8 and later.

To my surprise the reason behind this problem was a simple option to disable unnecessary animations in Windows. As most of you know I always disable unwanted animations/shadows and other eye candy effects in Windows and 3rd party programs to make the computer faster and one such animation option was causing this irritating issue upon deactivation.

The option was “Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing” in advanced system settings. I actually disabled this option to improve Windows performance but as a side effect, the option also disabled screen dimming indication while taking screenshots.

That’s really surprising behavior! The option is given to disable animations which are shown when you minimize or maximize a program window. It should has nothing to do with auto save screenshot process.

When we take screenshot using WIN+PrtScn hotkey, we don’t minimize or maximize any window, then why the screen dimming functionality gets disabled if we uncheck the “Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing” option?

Its definitely a serious bug in Windows 8 and later which was not either noticed or fixed by Windows developer team.

Anyway if you are also facing this problem, just enable “Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing” option present in advanced system settings. Just check out STEP 2 in following tutorial to learn the complete process to enable or disable this option:

Master Tutorial to Make Windows 8 / 8.1 Super Fast

Once you enable the option, the screen will start dimming when you press WIN+PrtScn keys to take screenshots.

Also Check:

[Windows 10 Fix] Dotted Circle Animation Not Showing on Reboot or Shutdown Screen

[Bug Fix] Lock Screen Shows Solid Black Background in Windows 10

[Did You Know] Ultimate List of Windows 8 Bugs and Goof-ups