There was an update to Windows 11 some months ago, and now when I press the Print Screen key it automatically directs me to cropping a part of my screen to copy and save as a screenshot, or I can choose to copy the whole screen and it saves both in the clipboard and in my screenshots folder. Before this update I needed to do Print Screen + Home to save an automatic screenshot. However, when I'm on the sims, pressing the print screen key alone only copies my current screen on the clipboard.

Me, personally, I always use print screen to copy my screen and I immediately go to Paint (I'll never stop using this program haha) and I crop the edges, name the photo, and save it. I prefer doing this because I like giving my screenshots a chronological number that makes sense to me and a name of what's going on in my photo so that I can later search by sims' names. I have taken screenshots before and waited till I'm done playing to crop and rename my pictures, but I find it quite tedious. I'm just used to cropping and naming them at the time of taking them, and then I keep on playing

Windows 10 and later (and possibly 8 as well, I don't know) have a screenshot option enabled by default. It's the Windows key + printscreen button, and saves in a folder inside the native "Pictures" folder. Took me long enough to figure out that one

Not sure about earlier versions, though. I think I used the Printscreen + Paint/Photoshop method for a very brief time, but other than that I've used Gadwin Printscreen since my XP computer.

I prefer to keep on playing instead of editing between each screenshot and edit later (I usually have more time for editing than playing), so having the pictures save in a folder is a must.

In settings>accessibility>screenshots, switch off where it says 'use print screen to open snipping tool'.

I don't recall setting it up. As I recall, I've been able to make a screenshot by just pressing PrintScreen (without the Windows key) ever since I got the new computer in October 2020, even before I got The Sims 2 to run properly on it. Maybe it does have something to do with me subscribing to Office 365, which I did almost immediately on getting the computer. Office 365 includes a lot more space on OneDrive than I'd get with Windows 10 alone.

Nah, I don't use Office at all and I have the same feature without having set it up.

It's a feature of Windows 10 and 11, take a look at the article I linked earlier. The snipping tool is too.