At some point, you must have come across something really cool that you would have wished to take a screenshot of and share with others. It might be a screengrab or a movie, maybe your new high score from one of the games, or a conversation you had with your crush on Facebook, a bug that you wish to report or for that matter just anything on your screen. Luckily there is a built-in feature on the Mac to take Screenshots with ease.
Depending on what or rather how much of the screen you want to capture there are a few methods you can choose from, follow what suits you best based on your requirement.
To screenshot the entire screen:
First, open all the apps and windows that you want to include in your screenshot and arrange them in the order or position that you want them to be captured in and then press the Command + Shift + 3 keys at the same time. This should trigger a camera click sound and the screenshot will be saved on the desktop in the PNG format with the date and time information included. Double click on the screenshot to open it or Right click and select the open with option to open it with another app and share it.
To screenshot a part of the screen:
Even in this procedure, first set up the apps in the order you want to be in when taking the screenshot and then press the Command+Shift+4 keys together and then place the cursor at the corner of the area that you want to capture and drag the crosshairs to the opposite corner. This should give you a precise pixel count in case you’re looking for a particular size. You can hold down the Option key to change the lock point or press the Shift key to lock all sides except one.
When you’re finally happy with the are, release the cursor and the area of the screen surrounded by the border is taken a screenshot of. You should now hear a camera click sound and the screenshot will appear on the desktop with the date and time information Double-click the file to open it or right click and choose open with to choose another app to share the file.
Screenshot a specific Mac App window:
To take a screenshot of a specific app window on your Mac first open the windows of the App that you want to screenshot and then Press the Command + Shift + 4 key combination together and your cursor should turn into a crosshair, now press the spacebar key and the cursor should turn into a camera icon. Place the camera cursor on the window that you want to screenshot and the window will get a blue tint so that you know the right window has been selected.
Click to take the screenshot and you should hear a camera click sound and the screenshot will get saved on the desktop with the date and time information. You can now double-click the file to open it or right-click on it and select open with to share it with another app if you wish to.
The above-mentioned method can be used to capture a specific drop-down menu too and in that case, only the drop-down menu will be captured.
Save the screenshot directly to your Mac clipboard:
Follow one of the above methods to set up the screenshot scenario in the way you wanted it to be in case it was to be saved on the desktop and then press the Command + Shift + 3 at the same time to capture the image to the clipboard or press the Command + Shift + 4 at the same time to capture the screenshot area and then the Spacebar to capture a specific window.
You can now go to the document or image editor of your choice and then paste the image to get the image and save it.
Alternative method to capture screenshot on Mac:
To initiate a screenshot on the Mac, use the Shift + Command + 5 combination together. This initiates the recording option and should present a recording panel as shown below. The first three options here are to capture a screenshot while the latter two allow you to choose the capture options.
The first option her allows you to capture a screenshot of the entire screen and then save it to the default folder, the next option is indicated in the form of a window icon and allows you to capture the screenshot of a particular window. The third option here allows you to capture a screenshot of a selected region and then save it in the default windows, this is indicated with a dotted rectangle icon in the Screenshot bar.
Once the window size is selected you can use the options button to configure other settings for the screenshots. The menu allows you to choose the default storage location for the capture, there is also a timer option that allows you to have a buffer time before the screenshot is captured.
Note:
Some apps, especially the one that was developed to display copyrighted content may not allow the capturing of the screen and its contents, in these cases the screenshot might fail or produce a blank image.