- Mac Screen Capture Shortcut Key
- How To Paste Screenshot On Mac
- Full Screenshot On Mac
- How To Screenshot Part Of Screen Mac Desktop
- How To Screenshot Part Of Screen Mac
How to take a screenshot of a selected portion of your screen (on Mac) Step 1: Open the Capture window. In the menu bar, click the TechSmith Snagit icon to open the Capture window on the screen. If you’re in the Snagit editor, click the Capture button in the toolbar to bring up the Capture window. Similar to MAC OS, you take a screenshot by pressing Cmd + Shift + 3. But with Cmd + Shift + 4, you can select an area manually instead of capturing the entire screen. And if you want to take a screenshot of a specific window, press Cmd + Shift + 4 + Space. There is no fixed way to take screenshots on an Android device.
If you have been a windows OS user and looking for a tutorial on how to take a screenshot on a Mac or you’ve been using MacBook and want to know different methods, then you’ve reached the right place.
Here in this post, I’ll explain different methods of taking a screenshot on your Mac.
Contents
- 1 How to Take a Screenshot on a Mac (Partial & Full Screen)
- 1.2 How to take a screenshot on a Mac – 4 different methods
- 1.2.3 Method -3: Take a screenshot of the full screen & copy to clipboard
- 1.2.4 Method -4: Take the timed/regular screenshot of full/partial screen/window with GRAB (inbuilt application of Mac)
- 1.2 How to take a screenshot on a Mac – 4 different methods
I heard from quite a few people that Macbook is a bit difficult to operate but the things are completely opposite to that. MacBook is much simpler and has more options to perform a specific task.
Here in this article, I’ll discuss several ways of doing the same thing differently i.e. How to Take a Screenshot on a Mac.
Why do you need to take a screenshot?
There could be hundreds of reasons why one would need to take a screenshot.
Whether you want to take a screenshot of the payment confirmation page that displays after you make online payment Or you want to take a screenshot of other documents such as keynote slide with important points Or you need to take a screenshot of a game score that you want to share with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.
To be specific, taking a screenshot of the live chat with a customer support executive of the company you have purchased/purchasing any product from can have you some proof to show them later if needed. It happened to me! thankfully I had taken screenshots.
I ordered a Bluetooth speaker from this website (can’t disclose the website). When I got it home, I found the product was faulty.
I got in touch with the customer support team through online chat. This man assured me of replacing the item with a new one. I took the screenshot of all my discussions with him for my record.
In the end this man told me, they will send someone within one day to pick the item and replace it with a new one.
Nobody came for two days and I called them over the phone to understand the matter.
This time they said they can’t replace the item and they didn’t commit to replacing it.
I showed them the screenshot and won the argument and they had to replace this faulty Bluetooth speaker.
So the purpose of taking a screenshot could be different for different people, I am not going into many details.
Whatever a person wants to take a screenshot on a MacBook, I’m going to discuss the easiest ways of doing so.
You can choose to automatically save the file on the desktop or copy to clipboard to edit it further using a photo editor before saving it as a final version.
How to take a screenshot on a Mac – 4 different methods
So there are several methods you can do this task with but I’ll discuss the most common and simple ones. These methods are for taking a screenshot of full screen or partial.
You can choose to save the file automatically in .png format or copy it to the clipboard to edit with a photo editor before finally saving it.
Method -1: Take a screenshot of Full Screen & auto safe on Desktop
In case you decide to take a screenshot of the entire screen, go for this option.
It will take the screenshot when you press the keys that I’m going to tell below and save the file on your desktop. Let’s take a look at the process.
Step:1– Open files /documents that you want to take a screenshot of. By default, it will capture the whole screen irrespective of what all you have on the screen and whether or not you want to capture everything.
So let’s open all those files and documents you want to include in this screenshot.
Step:2– Make sure the speakers of Macbook is not muted.
Step:3– Now you need to press SHIFT + COMMAND + 3. When you do that, you will hear a photo clicking sound that confirms a Screenshot on Mac has been taken.
Step:4– By default, the captured screenshot is saved on Desktop in a format the looks similar to “Screen Shot YYYY-MM-DD at Hour.Min.Sec PM.png”.
Here, the YYYY stands for year, for example, 2017, MM for month & DD for the date of taking the screenshot.
It also includes time as you can notice in the sample file name format. The PM will be replaced by AM if you take the screenshot before the afternoon.
So the general rule is, when you have done with taking the screenshot, go to the desktop and look for the file that starts with “Screen Shot”.
In case you have taken multiple screenshots, you will then have to open the file manually and see which one you want. Dvd player program for mac.
By default, it saves the file in the .png file extension.
Also see: Best iOS Emulator for Windows
Method -2: Take a screenshot of partial screen & auto safe on Desktop
Sometimes you don’t want to capture everything from the screen and need to find out a way to capture only the selected area.
If you have to do that, try this method. Here you will be able to select an area which you want to include in this screenshot and autosave on the desktop.
Step:1– So here again open the file/documents which you want to include in the screenshot.
You need to bring the file forward on the screen. Since you can select the area, you can leave other files open backward.
Step:2– Make sure your Macbook speaker is not muted.
Step:3– Now you need to press SHIFT + COMMAND + 4and the curser of your MacBook will be transformed into a crosshair.
You can now select the area (documents/images) on the screen that you want to capture in this screenshot.
When the cursor becomes a crosshair and you start with selecting area to be captured, click & hold and move from start to endpoint and release.
You will hear a clicking sound which means the screenshot of the selected area on your Mac has been taken.
The format of the screenshot will be the same as I discussed in the above method and the file will be saved in the .png file extension.
Step:4– Open the file to check whether it captured all that area you were needed.
You can always change the file extension to other formats through file editor’s “save as” option but that is not recommended as saving a screenshot in other extensions might result in loss of picture quality.
It becomes troublesome when the screenshot has tables and figures.
Method -3: Take a screenshot of the full screen & copy to clipboard
If you don’t autosave the screenshot on the desktop, follow this method. In this method, the screenshot that you capture will get copied to the clipboard and you can use any picture editor to edit the file before saving it as a final version. Take a look.
Step:1– Again, open the document or images you want to take screenshots of. Re-arrange the file exactly like you want to see in a screenshot.
Step:2– Unmute Mac’s speakers if its muted.
Step:3– Now you need to press SHIFT + COMMAND + 3 + CONTROL keys. Again at the time of screenshot is taken and copied to the clipboard, you will picture clicking sound.
Step:4– Open your favorite photo editor and press “Command + V“. The screenshot capture will be pasted into the picture editor. Edit it or simply save it, it is your choice.
Mac Screen Capture Shortcut Key
Bonus Tip-
If you want to select the area to be captured and saved to the clipboard, replace numerical key “3” with “4” in the above method.
Method -4: Take the timed/regular screenshot of full/partial screen/window with GRAB (inbuilt application of Mac)
This is the easiest method I’ve ever seen to take a screenshot on a Mac. You can take timed screenshots with the GRAB app which is an in-built app in Macbook.
Grab app takes 10 seconds to take a screenshot of the whole window and open the captured screenshot in the GRAB app itself.
Apart from that, you can also take regular screenshots as well with this app.
How to find GRAB App?
Go to “Finder” and type Grab. The Grab app will pop up in the result. Click the app to start.
Alternatively, you can go to th search option on the top right corner of your Macbook screen and search for the Grab app.
How to take the timed screenshot
With the Grab inbuilt app, you can take the timed screenshot. Open the Grab app and go to capture as shown in the below image.
When you select “Timed Screen” option from “Capture” It will ask you to start the timer for taking a screenshot. When you click the button, the screenshot of the windows is automatically taken after 10 seconds. Wasn’t it super easy?
The Grab app can be used for taking regular screenshots as well as “selection”, “Window” & “Screen” option that you see in the above image.
© AP It's easy to take screenshots on a Mac. AP- There are four ways to take a screenshot on a Mac, and all of them can be done with easy keyboard shortcuts.
- If you press Shift + Command + 5 on your Mac's keyboard, you'll open the screenshot menu, which lets you take screenshots and videos, as well as customize your settings.
- Pressing Shift + Command + 4 will let you take a quick screenshot anywhere on your screen, while Shift + Command + 3 will capture the entire screen at once.
- If you have a MacBook with a Touch Bar, you can use Shift + Command + 6 to take a screenshot of the Touch Bar.
- Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.
If you see something great online, it's only natural that you'll want to share it with others. Obviously you could send a link, but what if you only want to point out a specific section or image?
This is where screenshots come in. You can take high quality screenshots on any Mac computer, and then edit or share them however you like. They'll automatically be titled 'Screen Shot,' followed by the date and time you took them.
If you've bought or updated your Mac since 2018, you even have access to the advanced screenshot menu, which will let you take videos of your screen too.
Best of all, taking screenshots on a Mac only takes a single keyboard shortcut. Which shortcut you use, though, depends on how you want to take the picture.
How To Paste Screenshot On Mac
Here's four ways to take screenshots on a Mac.
How to screenshot on a Mac
Every method for screenshotting on a Mac uses the Shift, Command, and number keys. In short:
- Shift + Command + 3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen.
- Shift + Command + 4 lets you highlight a specific part of the screen to capture.
- Shift + Command + 5 opens the screenshot menu, which lets you do both of the above, as well as record videos and edit your screenshot options.
- Shift + Command + 6 takes a screenshot of the Touch Bar, if your Mac has one.
We'll go over all of them below, starting with the most widely applicable method: the screenshot menu.
Taking a screenshot with the screenshot menu
The screenshot menu was introduced in MacOS Mojave, the big 2018 update — if you've bought or updated your Mac since then, there's a very good chance you have it.
To open this menu, press Shift + Command + 5. A small bar will appear at the bottom of the screen.
The three icons on the left will let you take a screenshot of the entire screen, a specific window, or a highlighted section, respectively. The next two icons to the right will let you record a video of the entire screen, or just a highlighted section.
The 'Capture' button on the far right will take the screenshot, or begin recording the video.
© William Antonelli/Business Insider The screenshot menu will offer you a variety of options. William Antonelli/Business InsiderThere's also a menu labeled 'Options.' This menu lets you choose where to save the screenshot or video, how much time you want between pressing 'Capture' and the screenshot or video being taken, and more.
© William Antonelli/Business Insider The options menu will let you customize how your screenshots are taken. William Antonelli/Business InsiderOf note in this menu is the 'Show Floating Thumbnail' option, which is turned on by default. When this is enabled, after you take a screenshot, a tiny thumbnail of it will appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The screenshot won't be saved to your computer until this thumbnail disappears after a few seconds.
However, you can click this thumbnail before it disappears to open the screenshot in a new window. In this window, you can draw or type on it, crop it, share it via your Apple ID account, or delete it.
© William Antonelli/Business Insider You can make the floating thumbnail disappear faster by clicking and dragging it off the screen. William Antonelli/Business InsiderTaking a screenshot of a highlighted section or window
If you want to take a quick screenshot without going through the screenshot menu, you can use this shortcut.
When you press Shift + Command + 4, your mouse cursor will turn into a crosshair. You can then click and drag this crosshair across the screen to create a highlighted box — as soon as you let go of the mouse, your Mac will screenshot everything in the box.
© William Antonelli/Business Insider Everything in the highlighted box will be screenshotted. William Antonelli/Business InsiderBut this isn't all you can do with this shortcut.
If you press Shift + Command + 4, and then press the spacebar, your crosshair will turn into a camera icon. You can then click on any open window to take a screenshot of that window — when the screenshot is saved, it'll have a gray border around it.
If you drag the crosshair to create a highlighted box, and then press and hold the spacebar, it'll lock the box so it can't change size. You can then drag the box anywhere on the screen. Just release the spacebar to take your screenshot.
Similarly, if you drag to create a highlighted box and then press and hold the Shift key, you can adjust solely the height or width of the box. Move your mouse up or down to adjust the height, and left or right to adjust the width. Let go of the mouse to take the screenshot.
Taking a screenshot of the entire screen
Pressing Shift + Command + 3 will immediately take a screenshot of your entire screen. If you're using multiple monitors, it'll take and save screenshots of every monitor.
Note that unless you enable it in the screenshot menu, this won't capture your mouse cursor. And if you have the floating thumbnail option enabled, taking screenshots in quick succession will capture the floating thumbnail in the corner, too.
Taking a screenshot of the Touch Bar
Not all Mac computers have the Touch Bar, a long but thin touch screen built into the keyboard. But if your MacBook does have one, you likely know how useful it can be.
If there's something on your Touch Bar that you'd like to show others, you can screenshot it by pressing Shift + Command + 6. This will immediately capture everything on your Touch Bar.
Full Screenshot On Mac
© Apple The Touch Bar screenshot will be as long as the actual Bar. AppleIf your Mac doesn't have a Touch Bar, pressing this won't do anything.
How To Screenshot Part Of Screen Mac Desktop
Maya Kachroo-Levine contributed to an earlier version of this article.