Taking a screenshot on macOS is much easier than on Windows. There is no ‘Imp’ button. Gasp.’ on the keyboard, but we also don’t need to go into Paint to save the image. Pretty much anything can be done with keyboard shortcuts, and there are plenty of different options. On the other hand, thanks to the different configurations of the operating system, we can adapt captures to our workflow on Mac.
In macOS we can take different types of screenshots. In other words, it can be different areas of the screen, with different elements or captures. If you are looking to record Mac screen, you have two official apps to do it on your computer.
Take a screenshot of the whole screen
This is the simplest and most common screenshot of all. This capture allows us to save an image of the entire computer screen. Just press the key combination Cmd-Shift-3. A screenshot of the entire screen will automatically be taken, which will appear in the lower right corner of the desktop:
If you click on this thumbnail, you can access basic editing options, such as sharing the image or opening it with Preview. If you do nothing, the thumbnail will disappear after a few seconds and the image file will be automatically saved to your desktop.
Take a screenshot of only part of the screen
We do not always want to capture the whole screen, most of the time we are only interested in a small part to show a certain aspect. For this, macOS allows us to select the area that interests us by dragging the cursor. Press the key combination Cmd-Shift-4the cursor will automatically turn into a crosshair, drag to select the part of the screen that interests you and when you release you will have taken the capture.
You have not selected well? Nothing happens, you can modify the selected area before releasing the cursor. Depending on which key you press while selecting, it will perform a different action:
- Change: Changes the area with horizontal or vertical limitation.
- Option: Changes the selected area from the center out.
- Spacebar: allows you to move the selected area.
Take a screenshot of a single window
Neither the whole screen nor a specific area, but a certain window. macOS allows us to take a screenshot of one of the open windows on the desktop, completely isolating it from the rest of the elements so that it is a cleaner capture of the window or the application that interests us. It is very simple, press Cmd-Shift-4 then spacebar. The cursor will change from a cross to a camera icon, select the window you want to capture with and click on it.
The capture will be generated automatically and will appear in the thumbnail at the bottom right as in the rest of the cases. The window will have a transparent background and a shadow so that the contrast with this background is not too harsh.
This applies not only to application windows, but also to the menu bar for example, or any context menu or dialog box that appears in an application. Move the cursor before clicking to highlight the area who is going to be captured so you can easily know. Finally, if you hold down the Option key while clicking, a white background with shadow will not be applied to the screenshot.
Take a screenshot of the lock screen
The macOS lock screen appears before you sign in or after waking up. There’s little reason to take a screenshot of this interface, but if you want, it’s possible. Log out or lock the screen with the shortcut Ctrl-Cmd-Q, after that press the key combination Cmd-Shift-3. When you unlock the screen again, the screenshot will appear on the desktop or our default location.
Take a screenshot with a timer
For this screenshot we will need to use the command Cmd-Shift-5 to enable screenshot options. There we will see that we can choose the size of the capture, as well as an options button. By clicking on them, several of them will appear. Just choose 5 or 10 seconds to take a timed screenshot on Mac.
Take a screenshot that includes the mouse pointer
To mark an element that we want to highlight on the screen, the most logical thing to do is to use the mouse pointer. This doesn’t normally show up on screenshots though, but you can make it appear.
In this case, you should use the Preview app. In the application menu, navigate to File > Screenshot > Entire Screen. A small timer will start that will give you time to go to the interface you want to capture and point your cursor on it, the image will be saved with the mouse pointer and you can edit it directly in Preview.
5 tips to get the most out of your screenshots
These are all the ways to take a screenshot in macOS, although there are other things to keep in mind if you want to be a pro at Apple’s operating system snapshots. In most of these cheats, you need to use Terminal, but don’t worry, you don’t need to be a hacker for this.
Change the default name of screenshots
‘Screenshot 2018-05-18 at 12.35.02’ is not a very nice name for an image, it’s descriptive but maybe you want something simpler or more differentiate your captures from those of others. You can change the default name.
- Terminal open.
- Copy and paste the following command: defaults write com.apple.screencapture name “Applesfera”
- Replace what’s inside the quotes with what you want to appear.
- Copy and paste the following command: killall SystemUIServer
Remove default date and time from screenshots
The previous trick allowed us to change the name but still the date and time appear in the screenshots, you can also get rid of it:
- Terminal open.
- Copy and paste the following command: defaults write com.apple.screencapture “include-date” 0
- Copy and paste the following command: killall SystemUIServer
If you want to include the date and time again, do the same steps again but at the end of the command change the ‘0’ to ‘1’. In my case I prefer to leave the date and time because it makes it easy to identify the captures if you take several and also prevents them from being numbered, since they will all always have a different name.
Change the default screenshot location
By default, screenshots are saved to the macOS desktop. If you don’t want to shrink your image desktopthere is a Terminal command for this:
- Terminal open.
- Copy and paste the following command: defaults write location com.apple.screencapture ~/Documents/Capturas
- Copy and paste the following command: killall SystemUIServer
In this case, the command indicates that they will be saved in the ‘Documents’ folder and within this folder in the ‘Captures’ folder. You can create your own custom location.
Change the format of screenshots
By default, the operating system saves screenshots as PNG images. They are higher quality and allow for transparency, but they also take up a lot more space and sometimes we just want to share something quickly. You can use a smart folder to change the format of images you drag into it, but you can also change format from Terminal to make JPEG files:
- Terminal open.
- Copy and paste the following command: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg; killall SystemUIServer
Don’t want JPEG? There are a few more options, just use one of the following commands:
- JPEG: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg; killall SystemUIServer
- GIF: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type gif; killall SystemUIServer
- PNG: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png; killall SystemUIServer
- PDF: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type PDF; killall SystemUIServer
- TIFF: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type tiff;killall SystemUIServer
Copy screenshot directly to clipboard
Finally, if you don’t want the image to be saved anywhere and have no name or date… you can store it directly in the clipboard. To do this, one of the combinations of screenshots seen above, if any accompanied by the Ctrl key they will be saved directly to the clipboard.
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