How To Take Screenshot On A Mac

by James Jo · March 3, 2013

Macintosh OS is one of the most advanced and popular operating systems in the world. One of the reasons that makes it popular is that you can perform numerous operations smoothly just by using certain keyboard shortcuts. One such operation is taking screenshots of the desired screen.

Let us take a look at some instructions that teaches you how to take screenshots on your Mac.

1. Press the Command, Shift and “3” keys together to take the screenshot of your entire screen. The screenshot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.

2. Press the Command, Control, Shift and “3” keys together. This will copy your entire desktop and the screenshot will be available on your clipboard to paste into any program you want.

Press the Command, Shift and “4” keys together. This will turn your cursor into crosshairs and you will be able to select a part of the display screen that you want to capture as a screenshot. Just click and drag it to select the desired portion. When you release your mouse button, the screenshot will be automatically saved in PNG format on your desktop (if you own Mac OS 10.3 and earlier version, the file will be saved in PDF format). Additionally, when you press the Control key with this combination, the captured image will be saved to the clipboard.

3. Press the Command, Shift keys and “4” keys together and immediately hit the Spacebar button. This will replace the crosshairs with a tiny camera. Use this camera to take a screenshot of the dock, the entire menu bar, an open menu, your desktop or any open window. For instance, you just need to move the camera over the application window and that window will be highlighted. After this, just click the mouse button and the screenshot will be saved as a PNG file on your desktop (if you own Mac OS 10.3 and earlier version, the file will be saved in PDF format).Also, if you press the Control key with this combination, then the captured image will be saved to the clipboard.

4. Go to Applications>Utilities and select “Grab” from the utilities list. Now go to Grab Preferences and select the cursor icon you want to have in your screenshot. To capture the screenshot, run Grab> choose the capture modes (Selection, Window, Screen, Timed Screen) from “Capture menu”.

Selection mode: Helps you capture a specific region of the screen by dragging around it. Grab will display a tooltip showing the size of the portion you have selected and the screenshot will open in a window when you release the mouse button. The cursor will not be included in the screenshot.
Windows mode: In this mode, an instruction window will appear asking you to select a particular window and then click the “Choose Window” button. On clicking this button, the instructions will disappear and the window you click on, will be captured.
Screen mode: Here, an instruction window will appear asking you to click the screen once you are ready.
Timed Screen: When you choose this option, an instruction window will appear and help you prepare the screen for capture. Once you are ready, simply press the “Start Timer” button and within ten seconds you will have to capture the screen. When the time is over, the entire screen will be captured.

To Conclude
These were some really easy steps for you to follow if you want to capture certain images on your Mac screens. Do try them out on your machines and share your experiences about the same.