If you don't know how to take a screenshot on Mac, but looking to learn, this post has everything that you'll need to read. Here, I will tell you how you can take a Screenshot on Mac. I'll list all the different types and methods to take a screenshot on your Mac.
- Jun 01, 2020 When saving your recording automatically, your Mac uses the name 'Screen Recording date at time.mov'. To cancel making a recording, press the Esc key before clicking to record. You can open screen recordings with QuickTime Player, iMovie, and other apps that can edit or view videos.
- What Is a Screenshot? The term 'Screenshot' also known as a snapshot or screen capture,.
See full list on wikihow.com. Mac OS keyboard commands are the easiest and quickest way to take a screenshot on a Mac, but there are different processes depending on whether you're capturing the entire screen or just a portion of it. In order to take a screenshot of the screen of every display you have open Press Shift-Command (⌘)-3. Need to take a screenshot on your Mac? Find out three different ways to get the job done.
Contents
- 1 Guide to Take a Screenshot on Mac
- 1.5 Method-5: Other ways to take a screenshot on Mac.
Guide to Take a Screenshot on Mac
Screenshots are essential for a lot of purposes in various work fields. Basically, a screenshot is a still image of what your computer screen is currently showing. Taking or capturing the screenshot means you have saved that still image to your storage. This may come handy when you want to make a PowerPoint presentation, remember some instructions, or just want to save a visual for viewing later.
Taking a screenshot on your smartphone is pretty easy and everyone knows how to do it. But, not everyone knows about taking a screenshot on Mac. That's why I'm writing this guide to help everyone learn to take a screenshot on Mac. Just go through this, and you'll learn everything you need about taking a screenshot on the Mac OS.
Method -1: Take a Screenshot of the Entire Screen and Save it to the Desktop.
In order to take the screenshot of the entire screen and save it to your desktop, hold down the Command + Shift + 3 keys on your Mac keyboard. If the volume is up, you will hear a camera shutter sound at the time you press and hold these keys. After the screenshot is captured, you can find it by going to the desktop. You will see an image file with the name ‘Screenshot xx-xx-xxxx.' ‘X' is the date and time of the capturing. You can just rename this file and use it anywhere you want.
Method-2: Take a Screenshot of Part of the Screen and Save it to the Desktop.
There are times when you'll only want to captureaportionfrom the Mac screen. Do the following in this case. Press and hold the Command + Shift + 4 on your Mac keyboard together. A crosshair cursor will then appear on the screen. Click on this cursor and drag it to highlight the specific area of the screen you want to capture. To edit your selection, press the Esc key to start from the beginning. After you have highlighted precisely what you need, release the mouse. You will hear a camera shutter indicating that the screenshot is taken. You need to have the volume of Mac up in order to listen to this sound. Now just go to your desktop and look for a file named something like this, ‘Screenshot xx-xx-xxxx.' where X will be the date and time of capture.
Method-3: Save the Screenshot of the Entire Screen to Clipboard.
Sometimes you will need to save a screenshot to the Clipboard. Like when you are making a PowerPoint presentation, you can just save the screenshot in the Clipboard and then insert it in your presentation. To do this, press and hold down the Command + Control + Shift + 3 keys on your Mac keyboard. You will hear the camera shutter sound indicating that the screenshot is captured. Now go to the destination where you want to insert this screenshot. For example, go to your presentation and press the Command + V keys together. That's it.
Method-4: Save the Screenshot of a part of the Screen to Clipboard.
Similarly to Chapter-2, you can screenshot a part of the screen and save it to your clipboard. To do this, press and hold down the Command + Control + Shift + 4 keys on your Mac keyboard. A crosshair cursor will appear, click on it and drag it over the area you want to highlight. To adjust your selection, you can press the Esc key on the keyboard. After you have highlighted the area, just release the mouse. Now go to the destination where you want to insert this screenshot and press Command + V keys together. That's it.
Method-5: Other ways to take a screenshot on Mac.
Apart from these methods, there are several other ways in which you can capture a screenshot of your Mac screen. Let's take a quick look at all the other methods.
(i) Take a Screenshot with Mac's Touch Bar.
The newer versions of the Macbook Pro have a Touch Bar that offers a Screenshot option. You can use this screenshot feature to capture full screen, partial screen, or specific window screenshots. When the Screenshot icon is enabled on the Touch bar, just tap on this icon and select the type of screenshot you want to take. The types are similar to the options while capturing screenshot using Grab. You'll learn about that in the next portion.
(ii) Take a Screenshot with Grab.
You can take a screenshot using the Grab app on your Mac. Go to the Finder folder situated at the dock, and insert ‘Grab' in the search bar present in the top-right side. Now go to the left-sidebar and choose ‘Applications.' Open the Grab app and select ‘Capture' present on the top navigation bar. Just choose the type of screenshot you want to take. You will have four options- Selection, Window, Screen, or Timed Screen.
(iii) Take a Screenshot with third-party apps.
There are third-party apps like Cleanshotand Captothat you can use in order to capture a screenshot on Mac. These apps offer additional features like capturing video of the screen, blurring desktop icons, taking high-quality images, etc. If you are professional, you must leave the default methods and give such apps a shot once.
Method-6: Edit a Mac Screenshot with Keynote.
You can edit your Mac screenshots with the Keynote app. It is a presentation app that comes with your Mac by default. Just save a screenshot on the desktop. Right-click on it and choose ‘Open with.' Now choose Keynote from the list of compatible apps. The screenshot will then open in Keynote and you can do the required editing as per your choice.
Summary
That's all for this guide. Now you know all the different ways and types of taking a screenshot on a Mac machine. You can also edit the screenshots now. For personal usage, you can just remember the keyboard shortcuts and use them to capture the screenshots. Or, if you are a professional, I'd recommend using good third-party apps. These apps offer features that can help you get an edge over others.
I hope this post helps you enough. For any queries, doubts, or suggestions, feel free to visit the comment section. I'll be glad to listen.
If you have been a windows OS user and looking for a tutorial on how to take a screenshot on a Mac or you've been using MacBook and want to know different methods, then you've reached the right place.
Here in this post, I'll explain different methods of taking a screenshot on your Mac.
Contents
- 1 How to Take a Screenshot on a Mac (Partial & Full Screen)
- 1.2 How to take a screenshot on a Mac – 4 different methods
- 1.2.3 Method -3: Take a screenshot of the full screen & copy to clipboard
- 1.2.4 Method -4: Take the timed/regular screenshot of full/partial screen/window with GRAB (inbuilt application of Mac)
- 1.2 How to take a screenshot on a Mac – 4 different methods
I heard from quite a few people that Macbook is a bit difficult to operate but the things are completely opposite to that. MacBook is much simpler and has more options to perform a specific task.
Here in this article, I'll discuss several ways of doing the same thing differently i.e. How to Take a Screenshot on a Mac.
Why do you need to take a screenshot?
There could be hundreds of reasons why one would need to take a screenshot.
Whether you want to take a screenshot of the payment confirmation page that displays after you make online payment Or you want to take a screenshot of other documents such as keynote slide with important points Or you need to take a screenshot of a game score that you want to share with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.
To be specific, taking a screenshot of the live chat with a customer support executive of the company you have purchased/purchasing any product from can have you some proof to show them later if needed. It happened to me! thankfully I had taken screenshots.
I ordered a Bluetooth speaker from this website (can't disclose the website). When I got it home, I found the product was faulty.
I got in touch with the customer support team through online chat. This man assured me of replacing the item with a new one. I took the screenshot of all my discussions with him for my record.
In the end this man told me, they will send someone within one day to pick the item and replace it with a new one.
Nobody came for two days and I called them over the phone to understand the matter.
This time they said they can't replace the item and they didn't commit to replacing it.
I showed them the screenshot and won the argument and they had to replace this faulty Bluetooth speaker.
So the purpose of taking a screenshot could be different for different people, I am not going into many details.
Whatever a person wants to take a screenshot on a MacBook, I'm going to discuss the easiest ways of doing so.
You can choose to automatically save the file on the desktop or copy to clipboard to edit it further using a photo editor before saving it as a final version.
How to take a screenshot on a Mac – 4 different methods
So there are several methods you can do this task with but I'll discuss the most common and simple ones. These methods are for taking a screenshot of full screen or partial.
You can choose to save the file automatically in .png format or copy it to the clipboard to edit with a photo editor before finally saving it.
Method -1: Take a screenshot of Full Screen & auto safe on Desktop
In case you decide to take a screenshot of the entire screen, go for this option.
It will take the screenshot when you press the keys that I'm going to tell below and save the file on your desktop. Let's take a look at the process.
Step:1– Open files /documents that you want to take a screenshot of. By default, it will capture the whole screen irrespective of what all you have on the screen and whether or not you want to capture everything.
So let's open all those files and documents you want to include in this screenshot.
Step:2– Make sure the speakers of Macbook is not muted.
Step:3– Now you need to press SHIFT + COMMAND + 3. When you do that, you will hear a photo clicking sound that confirms a Screenshot on Mac has been taken.
Step:4– By default, the captured screenshot is saved on Desktop in a format the looks similar to 'Screen Shot YYYY-MM-DD at Hour.Min.Sec PM.png'. Popular browsers for mac.
Here, the YYYY stands for year, for example, 2017, MM for month & DD for the date of taking the screenshot.
It also includes time as you can notice in the sample file name format. The PM will be replaced by AM if you take the screenshot before the afternoon.
So the general rule is, when you have done with taking the screenshot, go to the desktop and look for the file that starts with 'Screen Shot'.
In case you have taken multiple screenshots, you will then have to open the file manually and see which one you want.
By default, it saves the file in the .png file extension.
Also see: Best iOS Emulator for Windows
Method -2: Take a screenshot of partial screen & auto safe on Desktop
Sometimes you don't want to capture everything from the screen and need to find out a way to capture only the selected area.
If you have to do that, try this method. Here you will be able to select an area which you want to include in this screenshot and autosave on the desktop.
Step:1– So here again open the file/documents which you want to include in the screenshot.
You need to bring the file forward on the screen. Since you can select the area, you can leave other files open backward.
Step:2– Make sure your Macbook speaker is not muted.
Step:3– Now you need to press SHIFT + COMMAND + 4and the curser of your MacBook will be transformed into a crosshair.
You can now select the area (documents/images) on the screen that you want to capture in this screenshot.
When the cursor becomes a crosshair and you start with selecting area to be captured, click & hold and move from start to endpoint and release.
You will hear a clicking sound which means the screenshot of the selected area on your Mac has been taken.
The format of the screenshot will be the same as I discussed in the above method and the file will be saved in the .png file extension.
Step:4– Open the file to check whether it captured all that area you were needed.
You can always change the file extension to other formats through file editor's 'save as' option but that is not recommended as saving a screenshot in other extensions might result in loss of picture quality.
It becomes troublesome when the screenshot has tables and figures.
Method -3: Take a screenshot of the full screen & copy to clipboard
If you don't autosave the screenshot on the desktop, follow this method. In this method, the screenshot that you capture will get copied to the clipboard and you can use any picture editor to edit the file before saving it as a final version. Take a look.
Step:1– Again, open the document or images you want to take screenshots of. Re-arrange the file exactly like you want to see in a screenshot.
Step:2– Unmute Mac's speakers if its muted.
Step:3– Now you need to press SHIFT + COMMAND + 3 + CONTROL keys. Again at the time of screenshot is taken and copied to the clipboard, you will picture clicking sound.
Step:4– Open your favorite photo editor and press 'Command + V'. The screenshot capture will be pasted into the picture editor. Edit it or simply save it, it is your choice.
Bonus Tip-
If you want to select the area to be captured and saved to the clipboard, replace numerical key '3' with '4' in the above method.
Method -4: Take the timed/regular screenshot of full/partial screen/window with GRAB (inbuilt application of Mac)
This is the easiest method I've ever seen to take a screenshot on a Mac. You can take timed screenshots with the GRAB app which is an in-built app in Macbook.
Grab app takes 10 seconds to take a screenshot of the whole window and open the captured screenshot in the GRAB app itself.
Apart from that, you can also take regular screenshots as well with this app.
How to find GRAB App?
Go to 'Finder' and type Grab. The Grab app will pop up in the result. Click the app to start.
Alternatively, you can go to th search option on the top right corner of your Macbook screen and search for the Grab app.
How to take the timed screenshot
With the Grab inbuilt app, you can take the timed screenshot. Open the Grab app and go to capture as shown in the below image.
Screenshot On My Mac
When you select 'Timed Screen' option from 'Capture' It will ask you to start the timer for taking a screenshot. When you click the button, the screenshot of the windows is automatically taken after 10 seconds. Wasn't it super easy?
How To Screenshot On My Mac Computer
The Grab app can be used for taking regular screenshots as well as 'selection', 'Window' & 'Screen' option that you see in the above image.
