HOW TO Take screenshots on Mac

2022-05-31 -

1 Get the whole screen

Press ⌘+⇧+3 to capture your entire screen. Click the resulting thumbnail on your desktop to open an editing window, where you can tweak it in various ways, such as by adding a signature or cropping it.

2 Save to clipboard

You can also save a screenshot to your clipboard instead of creating an image on your desktop by pressing ≈+⌘+⇧+3 or ≈+⌘+⇧+4. You can then paste the capture into an image editor.

3 Grab a selection

Press ⌘+⇧+4 to draw a box around an on-screen area. Release your mouse button and the area is saved as a screenshot. Before releasing, hold the Space bar to move the box, then release Space bar to set its new position.

5 One app window

Press ⌘+⇧+4, then press the Space bar. When you hover over an app window, it will go blue – click to capture that window and nothing else. It’ll save with the app’s shadow by default; hold ⌥ before clicking to omit it.

7 Record a video

The control panel also lets you switch from capturing images to recording a video of your screen. As with images, you can capture the entire screen or just a section. Click the stop button in your menu bar to finish.

4 Resize the selection

You can resize this selection. Press ⌘+⇧+4 then, before releasing your mouse button, hold ⇧ to scale the selection horizontally from one edge. Or hold ⌥ to expand it horizontally from the centre.

6 Control panel

Press ⌘+⇧+5 to bring up the screenshot control panel. Click Options to tweak screenshot settings, such as where the image is saved, whether to use a timer, if the mouse pointer is included, and more.