You can take a screenshot on your Mac to capture what's on the display. Screenshotting your Mac's screen is easy and can be helpful for a number of reasons, from documenting an error to quickly sharing something you see.
Once you've made the screengrab or screenshot, you can email it with any email program you have installed on your computer. Simply attach the captured image as a file attachment in the message.
How to Capture the Whole Screen
Taking a screenshot of your entire screen and capturing everything that's currently visible on it is as easy as striking a few keys on your keyboard.
- Press Command+Shift+3.
- Go to the desktop to locate the PNG screenshot. It's named Screen Shot with a date and time appended.If you don't want to email the screenshot as a PNG file but rather in another format, such as a JPG or TIFF, you can put the screenshot through a free image converter tool.
- Open your email program and attach the screenshot to the email.
Apr 26, 2017 Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, tap Search (or if you're using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, and then click Search), type snipping tool in the search box, and then select Snipping Tool from the list of results.
How to Screenshot Only Part of the Screen
If you know exactly what part of the screen you want to include in the screenshot, you can take the screengrab of a limited area to exclude the parts of the image you don't need.
- Snipping tool is only included with Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you can not find it, you can alternatively download the free tool Capture Screenshot lite which looks the same and works pretty much the same.
- Keyboard Shortcuts to Capture a Screen Shot with Mac OS X Mavericks and Yosemite A screen shot is an image of your computer desktop or an active window. Here's a summary of all the keyboard shortcuts you can use to capture your screen in Mac OS X.
- Press Command+Shift+4, which changes the cursor to a crosshair.
- Click and drag the crosshair over the whole area you want to include in the screenshot. As you do this, a box forms to show what your screenshot will include.You can release the keys when you see the crosshair appear.
- Release the cursor, and the screenshot of the area you selected will save to your desktop.
Pressing Esc at any time during the screengrab will abort the whole process and not save the image to your computer.
Tips for Taking Better Screenshots on Your Mac
Making screenshots perfect is hard to do. You might even find that you'll have to import the screenshot into an image editor to do some fine-tuning.
However, you can take some steps to make life a little easier when you're capturing screenshots on your Mac:
- Look closely at the crosshair as you make the selection box to see the height and width in pixels. To make a perfect square, for example, you want these two numbers to be the same.
- To screenshot a particular window without worrying about pixels at all, press Space right after you see the crosshair appear. Then, just click the window you want to screenshot, and the image that saves will include only that window.
- Press Space before you finish making the selection box to allow the box to be moved. That way, you can get the dimensions you want, but then you can move the box to the specific place where you want the screenshot to be taken.
- If you hold down Shift before finishing the selection box, you can also move the screenshot, but it will be restricted to moving horizontally only.
- You can take a timed screenshot in Mojave if you want the screenshot to take place a few seconds from now. Perhaps what you want to screenshot can only be activated with the same keystroke for a screenshot (in other words, activating a regular screenshot would interrupt the action). You can do a timed screenshot through Command+Shift+5: click Options when you see it, and then choose a timer option. For High Sierra and older versions of Mac, open Grab and go to Capture > Timed Screen, and then click Start Timer.
If you've upgraded to macOS Mojave, you can use Shift-Command (⌘)-5 to take all types of screenshots, or make video recordings of your screen. Other keyboard shortcuts, such as Shift-Command-3 and Shift-Command-4, continue to work in all versions of macOS.
Capture the entire screen
In macOS Mojave:
- Press Shift-Command-5 on your keyboard to see the onscreen capture controls:
- Click Capture Entire Screen in the onscreen controls. Your pointer changes to a camera .
- Click anywhere on any screen to capture the screen of that display, or click Capture in the onscreen controls to capture the screen of every display.
- A thumbnail of the screenshot briefly appears in the corner of your screen. You can then find the screenshot on your desktop.
In all versions of macOS:
- Press Shift-Command-3 to capture the screen of every display.
- Find the screenshot on your desktop.
Capture a window
In macOS Mojave:
- Press Shift-Command-5 to see the onscreen capture controls.
- Click Capture Selected Window in the onscreen controls. Your pointer changes to a camera .
- Click a window to capture that window.
To exclude the window's shadow from the screenshot, press and hold the Option (⌥) key while you click. - A thumbnail of the screenshot briefly appears in the corner of your screen. You can interact with the thumbnail to edit the screenshot, move it, or take other actions. Or wait for the screenshot to appear on your desktop.
In all versions of macOS:
- Press Shift-Command-4.
- Press the Space bar. The pointer changes to a camera .
- Click a window to capture that window.
To exclude the window's shadow from the screenshot, press and hold the Option (⌥) key while you click. - Find the screenshot on your desktop.
Capture a selected portion of the screen
In macOS Mojave:
- Press Shift-Command-5 to see the onscreen capture controls.
- Click Capture Selected Portion in the onscreen controls.
- Drag to select an area of the screen to capture. To move the entire selection, drag from within the selection.
- Click Capture in the onscreen controls.
- A thumbnail of the screenshot briefly appears in the corner of your screen. You can interact with the thumbnail to edit the screenshot, move it, or take other actions. Or wait for the screenshot to appear on your desktop.
In all versions of macOS:
- Press Shift-Command-4.
- Drag to select the area of the screen to capture. To move the entire selection, press and hold Space bar while dragging.
- After you release your mouse or trackpad button, find the screenshot on your desktop.
Capture a menu
In macOS Mojave:
- Click the menu to reveal its contents.
- Capture the menu by following the steps to capture the entire screen or capture a window (the menu is treated like a window) or capture a portion of the screen that includes the menu.
In all versions of macOS:
- Click the menu to reveal its contents.
- Press Shift-Command-4.
- Drag to select the area of the menu to capture, then release your mouse or trackpad button to capture that area.
- Or press Space bar to change the pointer to a camera , then click the menu to capture it.
- Find the screenshot on your desktop.
Mac Clip Screen Shot
Capture the Touch Bar
If you have a Mac with a Touch Bar and macOS Sierra 10.12.2 or later, press Shift-Command-6 to capture what is currently displayed on the Touch Bar. Then find the screenshot on your desktop.
You can also customize the Control Strip region of your Touch Bar to include a Screenshot button.
Snipping Tool For Mac
Use the screenshot thumbnail
When you take a screenshotin macOS Mojave, a thumbnail of the screenshot appears briefly in the lower-right corner of your screen.
- Take no action or swipe the thumbnail to the right: The screenshot is automatically saved to your chosen save location, which by default is the desktop.
- Control-click the thumbnail to choose more actions, such as change the default save location, open the screenshot in an app, or delete the screenshot without saving it.
- Drag the thumbnail to move the screenshot to another location, such as to a document, an email, a Finder window, or the Trash.
- Click the thumbnail to open the screenshot. You can then use the markup tools in the toolbar to crop, rotate, annotate, and take other editing actions. Or click the share button to share the screenshot.
Clicking the thumbnail opens it in editing view. Hover your pointer over each button in the toolbar to see its function.
If you don't want the thumbnail to appear, click Options in the onscreen controls, then use the ”Show Floating Thumbnail” option to change the setting.
Learn more
Screen Clip Tool For Windows
- By default, screenshots are saved with the name ”Screen Shot date at time.png”.
- To cancel taking a screenshot, press the Esc (Escape) key before clicking to capture.
- To store the screenshot in the Clipboard instead of saving it, press and hold the Control key while you click to capture. You can then paste the screenshot into a document, message, or other location. Using Universal Clipboard, you can even paste it on another Apple device.
- You can open screenshots with Preview, Safari, or other apps that can edit or view images. Preview can export to a different format, such as JPEG, PDF, or TIFF.
- Screenshot controls in macOS Mojave are provided by the Screenshot app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. This app replaces the Grab app from earlier versions of macOS.
- Some apps, such as DVD Player, might not let you take screenshots of their windows.