Turn off Image or Video Prompt in Snagit 12

If you haven’t tried Snagit, you should check it out. It’s much better than relying on the old school screen capture mechanisms. When I was taking screenshots for my books, Snagit saved me a great deal of time. As just one example, try capturing an open dropdown menu using just Windows screen capture shortcuts—it’s like trying to catch a greased pig.

I just upgraded to Snagit 12 and found that every time I take an image capture, I’m prompted to select either a video or image capture (see the big blue buttons in the screenshot below). I rarely use the video capture, so this is a waste of time. Here’s how to turn it off.

First, check if you’ve got an old version of Snagit installed. I had 11 and 12 installed and was not getting the behaviour I wanted. I had to uninstall Snagit 11 to get rid of the old editor.

Next, go to the preferences window and check the hotkey associated with the default capture profile. I like to use print screen, so I’m going to change the “Global capture” shortcut key to something else. To get to the preferences window, you can right-click the icon in the task menu (bottom right corner of your screen with the hidden icons), then choose Preferences and the Hotkeys tab.

After I’ve freed up the right shortcut key, I’m going to associate that key (PrtScn) with a profile that doesn’t ask if I want to take video.

To do this, choose the “Send to Clipboard” profile from the Manage Profiles dialog, and then click the Hotkey button at the bottom to associate this with the keyboard shortcut you’d like to use. Note that I wanted to go directly to the Snagit editor, so I have that enabled.

Now I’m back to the lightning fast capture that I’ve come to love. When I use the hotkey, I go straight to the Snagit editor. If I wanted, I could add styles (such as borders) as part of the profile and they would be automatically applied.

p.s., If you’re wondering how I captured the Snagit windows. I cheated. I used Alt+PrtScn to do it old school.