How to do a screenshot on a Mac

On a Windows computer, you’ll find that there is a keyboard key for taking screenshots (the Print Screen key). In the MacBook it looks a little different…

This is because on a Mac, you use a set of keys to capture the screen in various ways. Although the sound of a single key is simply great, the Mac printing method is much smarter. The Mac screenshot has many options, so we’ll discuss them all here.

How to take a screenshot on a Mac

To take a screenshot, press and hold these three keys simultaneously: Shift, Command and 3. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of the screen, click it to edit the screenshot. You can also wait until the screenshot is saved on your desk.

Capturing a specific part of the screen

If you want to capture a small part of the screen, you can do it as follows:

  • Press Command + Shift + 4. The cursor will change to + and you can click and drag to select a specific part of the screen.
  • How to take a screenshot of a window or menu
  • Open the window or menu you want to capture.
  • Press and hold these keys simultaneously: Shift, Command, 4 and spacebar. The indicator will take the shape of a camera. To cancel the screen capture, press the Esc (Escape) key.
  • Click a window or menu to take a screenshot. To exclude window shadow from the screenshot, press and hold down the Option key while clicking.
  • If you see a thumbnail in the corner of the screen, click it to edit the screenshot. You can also wait until the screenshot is saved on your desk.
screenshot on mac
pixabay.com

macOS Mojave and the new screen capture interface

Now we also have the option of calling a special interface that allows you to support all possible screenshot modes.

After pressing the key combination Shift + Command + 5 we will see a special bar with icons allowing us to perform some interesting screen-related operations.

We can do the following with the new screenshot tool:

  • take a screenshot of the entire screen;
  • take a screenshot of the selected window;
  • take a screenshot of the selected piece of screen;
  • perform video recording of activities performed on the screen;
  • perform video recording of activities performed on the selected screen section.

 

Change the default location for saving screenshots in macOS

Screenshots are saved to the system desk by default. If you would like to change it and, for example, save all screenshots to one folder on your desk, you can do it as follows:

  • Create a folder where you want to save the screenshots, name and location are optional. For example, I will use the folder name “Screenshots”.
  • Open Terminal – you can do it by choosing the keyboard shortcut Control + Space (you will open Spotlight this way), then enter “terminal” in the search bar and press Enter.
  • Copy the following command: defaults write com.apple.screencapture location and paste into the terminal window. Make sure you have one space after the command.
  • Move the created “Screenshots” folder to the terminal window, as a result, the path to the “Screenshots” folder should appear after the command.
  • Press Enter.

 

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