Screenshots on macOS

Keyboard shortcuts

You can capture the entire screen, a window, or just a portion of the screen.

• ⌘ + ⇧ + 3 Capture the whole screen.
• ⌘ + ⇧ + 4 Capture a selection.
• ⌘ + ⇧ + 4 + Space Capture a window.
• ⌘ + ⇧ + 5 Capture the whole screen, a selection or a window.

See more information in Take a screenshot on your Mac.

Command line

Command line tool that capture an image of the whole, or part of the screen.

screencapture -ioW ~/Desktop/screenshot.png

• -i Capture screen interactively, by selection or window.
• -W Start interaction in window selection mode.
• -o In window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window.

More information in screencapture manual page.

Change default settings of screen capture

defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "Screenshot"

Disable shadow in screenshots:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

Save screenshots to the ~/Downloads

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location -string "${HOME}/Downloads"

Save screenshots in PNG format (other options: BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, TIFF)

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -string "png"

Disable datetime in screenshots filename

defaults write com.apple.screencapture include-date -bool false

To apply the changes, you need to restart the SystemUIServer:

killall SystemUIServer