Mac OS Catalina 10.15 is the latest Apple OS X Operating system succeeding Mac OS 10.14 Mojave. The operating system not only ships a dark mode derived from its predecessor, but also packs a pile of upgrades including a redefined Screenshot module.
Taking a screenshot on a Mac® is as easy as on a PC—when you know the keyboard shortcuts to do so.
There are plenty of key commands in macOS® you might want to use for screen capture. Today, we’ll break down the six best shortcuts for screenshots that any Mac user NEEDS to know—plus the one useful application that accomplishes all that and more with just one click.
Figure 1 – Keyboard shortcut for taking a screenshot of part of a Mac screen
One of the most common needs for that “print screen” command on a Mac is when we need to capture a portion of the screen. It’s like a snipping tool for Mac. Be it an Instagram story, Twitter update, or part of a webpage to share with a colleague, you can screenshot any of those with just a few key combos.
(1) To capture a portion of the screen, do the following:
This shortcut runs when I open the Infuse app. Screenshot: Cult of Mac. You can also have a shortcut run when you launch an app. For instance, I cooked up this shortcut in just a few minutes. There's more to taking screenshots than just a single key combination, and if keyboard shortcuts aren't your style, there's also a built-in screen capture app in macOS as well. Best snipping tool for Windows and Mac OS. Our tool can: cut any part of the screenshot, make notes, combine several screenshots, save in cloud storage, and share with anyone via short-link. Snipping Tool App is absolutely free to use. Download the latest version right now! For Windows For Mac OS. Fast screenshot of selected area Our app allows you to select any area on your desktop and take its screenshot with 2 button-clicks. Easy-to-use application Simple and intuitive user interface makes your work with the app easier and faster.
Figure 2 – Apple Support tweets the solution for screen capturing on Mac.
(2) To copy a portion of the screen to the clipboard, do the following:
Figure 3 – The process of taking screenshots of an active application
If you need a screenshot of a specific application that you’re currently using, use this method. You can easily print screen an active window of any program, be it Safari, Chrome, Photoshop, or Microsoft Excel.
(3) To capture a screenshot of an active window, do the following:
(4) To copy a screenshot of an active window to the clipboard, do the following:
Figure 4 – Keyboard shortcut for capturing the entire screen on a Mac
(5) To capture a screenshot of a whole page, do the following:
(6) To copy a screenshot of a whole page to the clipboard, do the following:
Figure 5 – Parallels Toolbox: The ultimate Mac application for screen and video capturing
Sometimes, remembering all the dozens of shortcuts to take a Mac screenshot is not our main priority. All we need is a simple application that has everything ready for us with just one click.
Parallels® Toolbox Screen and Video Pack is the best Designed to help optimize your workday, it has all the important tools for everyday needs, such as screen and video capturing, video converter, YouTube video downloader, and more.
You can try Parallels Toolbox without any obligations and decide for yourself whether a small introductory price is a fair cost for all the time saved.
Figure 6 – The primary location for all screenshots on a Mac is the desktop
Once you’re done taking them, where do screenshots on a Mac go?
Normally, screenshots are saved as PNG images (titled with the current date and time stamp) right on the desktop. The format looks as follows: “Screen Shot 2018-07-04 at 12.25.36.png”. Alternatively, a user can copy Mac screenshots to the clipboard by adding Control to the key combination and then pasting it right in the needed document. Here at Parallels, we practice this often—we love taking a MacBook® screenshot and sharing it with coworkers. It’s an easy and quick way to effectively communicate what we see on our end.
The shortcuts for screen capturing may not work for a few reasons. One of the most common ones: they are simply disabled.
To fix that, do the following:
If the shortcut is working but screenshots turn out blank, the reason is often copyright issues with the third-party application on the screen. To solve that, use the Parallels Toolbox application for screen capturing.
For many new Apple users, particularly those who are migrating from Windows and are used to that Prt Scrn (Print Screen) button, the answer to the question of how to screenshot on Mac isn’t immediately obvious.
Although it only takes pressing a couple of keys to take a screenshot on Mac, the fact remains that Mac screen capture is something that hasn’t historically felt all that intuitive. For example, in addition to different key commands for screenshotting windows vs. smaller selections, recording video of your screen for a long time was only possible through QuickTime Player.
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Although macOS Mojave has changed much of this, how to screenshot on Mac remains a heavy-hitting search query, as not everyone uses the latest version of macOS. Below you’ll find more information on taking a screenshot on Mac (and capturing video), as well as some useful tools to make your Apple screenshot life easier.
As there’s no dedicated button for print screen on Apple products, there are a few different commands associated with screen capture on Mac that vary slightly depending on your setup.
It makes sense to divide the world of how to take a screenshot on a Mac into pre and post-Mojave, since it was with this iteration of macOS that Apple really revolutionized their Mac screenshot command system.
If for whatever reason you don’t want to upgrade to Mojave then you’ll need to familiarize yourself with a couple of key Mac screenshot shortcut options:
The first of these commands is probably the easiest to get to grips with and the quickest one to take advantage of when taking a screenshot on Mac, as it captures the entire screen at once. If you’re using multiple screens, it takes a screenshot in Mac OS for every screen you’re using simultaneously.
The second of the commands represents a slightly more nuanced way to take a snapshot on Mac. Rather than capturing your entire screen, it prompts you to select the area you want to capture. If you follow it up with a press of Space, it allows you to choose the window you want to screencap instead.
Overall, while these commands do let you print screen on Mac, they feel sort of like an afterthought rather than a fully fledged feature of macOS. With so many people looking into how to screenshot on Mac, it’s not surprising that Apple recently decided to make it a little more clear how to screenshot in Mac OS Mojave.
In addition to the above commands, which still work for Mojave users, there’s now an option for them that’s very much in keeping with the existing format of how to print screen on Mac — ⌘ + Shift + [Number].
If you’re a Mojave, Catalina, or Big Sur user, you can use ⌘ + Shift + 5to bring up a screen capture menu that will allow you to:
At the right-hand side of this menu there’s also Options that lets you (among other things) select where your MacBook screenshot and video output is saved.
In other words, anyone looking for an easy answer to the question “how do you screenshot on a Mac?” could do a lot worse than considering an upgrade to Mojave in order to streamline the process.
You might notice that, even with the inclusion of ⌘ + Shift + 5 Mac screen capturing menu, the options for taking a Mac screenshot remain pretty basic. If you’re looking for a snipping tool for Mac that can do a little more, you may need to turn to a third-party developer.
CleanShot X is unbeatable here. The app toolkit is tailored for 50+ different changes, which makes it an ultimate screen capturing tool for Mac. You can use CleanShot X to capture screen — whether it’s a window, full screen, area, or even scrolling content, as well as record video.While capturing anything on your desktop, you can choose to hide all desktop clutter and disable desktop notifications in one click. Once you have your clean screenshot, open it from the overlay window that pops up, and start editing. You can add annotations, blur specific parts, or draw — CleanShot X will help you customize virtually anything.
A few not-so-obvious yet cool features to mention are self-timer, screenshot pinning, and internal cloud. Want to capture something with a delay? CleanShot X has a self-timer that will help you pick the right moment. If you want your screenshot to be visible on the screen, pin it to desktop. Finally, save your screen captures to the internal CleanShot Cloud and get shareable links in a flash.
If you’re looking for something with a little more emphasis on screen recording, Capto could be the ideal solution for you. In addition to recording video, or just taking a snapshot on Mac, you can also annotate and edit captures via an intuitive iMovie-esque interface.
Capto does wonders for software walkthroughs. And given its strong visual component, it’s also perfect for those with auditory shyness who would rather add captions than a voiceover. Capto’s built-in organizer is pretty helpful for keeping track of your screenshots too.
If you take a lot of screenshots then you’re probably way too used to your Downloads folder or Desktop being clogged up with images that have filenames like “Screen Shot 2019-XX-XX at 21.36.15”.
Unfortunately, this inelegant and cluttered outcome is the default Mac screenshot shortcut. Not particularly helpful for keeping all of your images in check, especially when macOS is prone to heavily abbreviating filenames.
While it’s possible to use Finder in conjunction with Preview to view all of your caps, that still isn’t a particularly satisfying visual experience. One of the best solutions is Inboard, which functions like a private Pinterest for your desktop and allows you to tag and filter all of your screenshots for later use.
Inboard takes care of the design savvy out there too with a feature that connects your Dribbble account to import all your likes for digestion at a later date.
On your Mac, choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click Language & Region. Open Language & Region preferences for me. Do one of the following: Choose a language for an app: Click the Add button, choose an app and a language from the pop-up menus, then click Add. The AppStore app is basically just a webview which means that the localization is done by the server and not your mac, in order to change the language to english you'll have to create an english account. You could also change the region of your account in the account settings, but that would make it impossible to use a foreign credit card. So I wanted to change the language, but just for iCal. This can be achieved by opening the application's property file in /Library - Preferences. For iCal, it's the file named. You can switch the language on just one app, or as many apps as you like. You can even use several languages at the same time, for different applications. And it doesn't change anything. Mac language switch app.
But even once you’ve solved the question of how to do a screenshot on a Mac, sharing those screenshots with, say, colleagues or friends isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do.
Rather than emailing files back and forth, or having to upload everything to a public Google Drive, you might consider a solution like Dropshare. As the name suggests, it makes sharing screenshots (and other files) as simple as dropping them into the relevant area.
Dropshare connects with a range of major third-party cloud apps, but you can also lean on proprietary Dropshare Cloud if you prefer, which is helpful if you want to keep your Mac screen capture sharing separate from your other sharing activity.
As you can see from above, learning how to screenshot on Mac isn’t particularly difficult, and screen capture on Mac is now easier than ever thanks to the addition of a dedicated MacBook screenshot and video capture menu in macOS Mojave.
It’s clear from this new feature that Apple understands the issue of how to print screen on Mac is one that has been, to put it lightly, unintuitive in the past, so you can likely expect to see further tweaks to the process in the future.
In the meantime, there are some excellent options in the snipping tool for Mac market that facilitate the process and offer a range of diverse features you won’t find among those built-in options for taking a screenshot on Mac.
Best of all, you can try all the apps mentioned here: CleanShot, Capto, Inboard, and Dropshare absolutely free with a 7-day trial of Setapp, a Mac platform with over 150 essential apps for any task at hand. Now you’re all set for your screenshotting game.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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