I take a lot of screenshots on my Mac – for all sorts of reasons. Often it’s screenshots of web pages that I am going to draw over or modify for mockups. Sometimes it’s screen shots of bugs that need fixing so I can send off bug reports, and occasionally it’s screenshots for tutorials/ blog posts. I used to use a stand alone application for taking screenshots but now I do everything using OSX built in functionality.
Below are a few hints and tips to help you when taking screenshots on your Mac.
‘Screenshotting’ basics
The commands below are what I use most often.
- Command + Shift + 3: Save a screenshot to your desktop as a png file.
- Command + Control + Shift + 3: Copy the desktop to your clipboard to be pasted into another application (such as Photoshop).
- Command + Shift + 4: Save a section of the screen to your desktop. Press these keys and a cross-hair will appear that you can then click and drag to define the region to store.
- Command + Control + Shift + 4: Copy a section of the screen to your clipboard. Press these keys and a cross-hair will appear that you can then click and drag to define the region to store.
Bonus Advanced Screenshots Tip
Yesterday I wanted to screenshot just one application window and not the entire screen – I thought I needed a separate app for this but after some Googling found there was actually a way to do it quite easily.
- Command + Shift + 4 + Space: Take a screenshot of the currently active Window.
Grab – Mac Screenshot Application
It’s not made very obvious but there’s actually an app called ‘Grab’ on the Mac that allows you to do all of this through a rudimentary menu based interface. You can access it most easily by searching for ‘Grab’ with Spotlight. I use Command + Space to access Spotlight then type GRAB.
The most significant additions in Grab include displaying a cursor in the screenshots (and being able to select what the cursor looks like), and the ability to do timed screenshots.
Let me know what you think on Mastodon, or BlueSky (or Twitter X if you must).