Steam Screenshot Folder: Where Steam Screenshots Are Saved and How to Find Them

Steam saves screenshots to its own data folders rather than your Windows Pictures folder by default. The fastest way to find the exact Steam screenshot folder for a game is to open Steam, go to View > Recordings & Screenshots, select a screenshot, then use Show on Disk. Steam opens the correct folder in File Explorer, so you do not need to guess your account ID or the game's App ID.

Valve says Steam's screenshot system works through the Steam Overlay, with F12 as the default screenshot hotkey. You can change that key under Steam > Settings > In Game. See Valve's Steam Screenshots documentation for the official behavior.

How to open the Steam screenshot folder

  1. Open the Steam desktop client.
  2. Choose View > Recordings & Screenshots. On some older client builds and in older documentation, this area may simply be called Screenshots.
  3. Make sure the Screenshots tab is selected, then choose the game or screenshot you want.
  4. Right-click the screenshot and choose Show on Disk. Windows File Explorer will open directly to that game's local screenshot folder.

Steam View menu with Recordings and Screenshots highlighted

Steam's current media viewer also contains game recordings and clips. Valve's Steam Game Recording support page identifies View > Recordings & Screenshots as the desktop location for this media viewer.

Steam Recordings and Screenshots window showing the Screenshots tab and game image thumbnails

Use Show on Disk to avoid hunting through numbered folders

The Show on Disk command is the best method because Steam's storage structure uses numeric folders. A Windows path commonly looks like this:

Steam\userdata\<account-id>\760\remote\<app-id>\screenshots

The account-id folder identifies the Steam account stored in that installation, while the app-id folder identifies the game. If more than one Steam account has used the PC, the userdata directory can contain several numbered account folders. That is why older instructions that tell you to manually match a profile URL to a folder are unnecessarily complicated.

Steam screenshot context menu with Show on Disk selected

Where is the Steam screenshot folder on Windows?

If Steam is installed in the usual Windows location, the full path is commonly similar to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<account-id>\760\remote\<app-id>\screenshots

If you installed Steam on another drive or in a custom folder, the beginning of the path will be different. The screenshot folder still sits under Steam's userdata directory. You can paste the path into File Explorer after replacing the placeholder IDs, but using Show on Disk is faster and less error-prone.

Windows File Explorer showing a Steam userdata remote game screenshots folder with JPG files

What if the screenshots are missing?

If nothing appears in the Steam screenshot viewer, check these points before searching the drive manually:

  • Confirm the screenshot hotkey. Open Steam > Settings > In Game and verify the screenshot shortcut. F12 is the default, but it can be changed.
  • Check the Steam Overlay. Valve notes that the Overlay must be active for Steam's screenshot system to work normally.
  • Look at the correct game. The media viewer can show screenshots from multiple games, so use its game filter or browse recent captures.
  • Check the correct Windows account and Steam installation. A second Steam installation or a different Windows user profile can point you to a different userdata directory.
  • Do not confuse local screenshots with uploaded screenshots. Screenshots you publish to Steam Community can exist online even if the local copy is later removed.

Can you change where Steam screenshots are saved?

Steam lets you adjust screenshot behavior and the hotkey in Settings > In Game, but the safest way to work with existing local screenshots is to let Steam open their actual folder. If your goal is simply to copy images into Pictures, OneDrive, or another backup location, open the folder with Show on Disk and copy the JPG files from there instead of moving Steam's internal folders.

Quick answer

To find Steam screenshots, open Steam > View > Recordings & Screenshots, select a screenshot, right-click it, and choose Show on Disk. On Windows, Steam screenshots are typically stored under Steam\userdata\<account-id>\760\remote\<app-id>\screenshots. Using Steam's own viewer is the quickest way to reach the correct folder without decoding the numbered directories.

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