Depending on whatever Apple laptop you have: MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac, you may have up to four options for taking a screenshot on a Mac.
Knowing how to capture a screenshot is a must-have skill if you want to save what’s currently on your Mac. Whether it’s event tickets, an email you just received, or just a snapshot of your desktop.
There are three ways to take a screenshot with keyboard shortcuts on a Mac, plus a fourth if you have a MacBook with a touch bar. In this tutorial, we’ll go through the various keyboard keys you’ll need to take a screenshot of on your Mac.
We’ll also show you what you can do with the screenshots after they’ve been taken. For swiftly saving, erasing, and accessing a snapshot for annotation, Apple gives a variety of options.
Command-Shift-3
This key combination will take a full-screen photo.
Shift-Command-4 | Screenshot on a Mac
This key combination will transform your cursor into a crosshair. Which you may use to capture a piece of your screen by dragging it. To capture the image, release the mouse button or trackpad.
You have a couple of additional options after hitting Shift-Command-4:
When you press and hold the space bar, the crosshair transforms into a little camera icon that you can drag over any open window. Simply click on a window to take a screenshot of it. This method creates a screenshot on mac with a small drop shadow and a white border around the window.
Keep the space bar pressed.
This preserves the shape and size of the selected region while allowing you to move it around on the screen. Use the space bar to realign your initial selection region before releasing the mouse button to take a screenshot if it’s a few pixels off.
Perform the following while holding down the Shift key:
This freezes all sides of the crosshairs-created selection area except the bottom edge, allowing you to position the bottom edge by moving your mouse up and down.
Release the Shift key and press it again without releasing the mouse button to adjust the right boundary of your selection area. Using the Shift key while holding the mouse button or touchpad, you may switch between adjusting the bottom and right boundaries.
Command 5 (Shift-Command)
This combination opens a little panel at the bottom of your screen that contains your screen capture choices. Using one of three buttons, you may capture a screenshot on a mac of your entire screen.
Similarly, you may use the two video recording keys to capture your entire screen or a piece of it. The screenshot panel may be closed by hitting the X button on the left, or you can leave it open by pressing the Escape key.
A Choices button is located on the right side of the screen. You may save your screenshot to the Desktop, Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, Preview, or Other Location. As well as add a 5- or 10-second delay to allow you to line up items that might otherwise be lost when using your snapshot tool.
If the screenshot panel is obstructing your view, grab its left edge and drag it to a new spot on your screen.
Command-Shift-6 Screenshot on a Mac
Did you know that if you have a 16-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar? Or any other model with the Touch Bar, you may take a screenshot of what’s now shown on it? To snap an extremely broad and skinny screenshot of your Touch Bar, simply press Command-Shift-6.
Annotation is simple.
If you select Floating Thumbnail, you’ll be able to rapidly annotate your photo with Markup tools. The Floating Thumbnail can be wiped away, and it will be saved to the spot where you last saved a photo.
Instead of Preview, a Markup View preview window will open when you click the Floating Thumbnail, with all of the markup features available in Preview.
With a right-click on the Floating Thumbnail, you may accomplish the following:
You may save the photograph to your desktop, Documents folder, or clipboard.
- Mail, Messages, Preview, and Photos are all ways to get to it.
- Display in Finder
- Delete
- In the above-mentioned Markup preview window, open it.
- Almost there (and save)
Long-time screenshots on mac may be sluggish to accept the new Command-Shift-5 shortcut. But I find myself utilizing it more for the ability to annotate screenshots without opening Preview and rapidly remove images. That I know I made a mistake with. The 5-second and 10-second delay options are also appreciated.