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How to screenshot on Mac: Three easy ways to capture you screen on a Mac

Orlando Mayorquin   | Paste BN

Congratulations, you made the switch from PC to Mac. Welcome to an enlightened technology experience. You will never turn back. 

Kidding, of course. This isn’t an Apple fanatics forum. Rest assured, your technology preferences won’t be a subject of ridicule here. But you’re presumably here because you made the switch to Mac from whatever else you were using before. Or maybe your memory simply needs refreshing. 

Few actions on devices are as vital these days as taking a screenshot – whether it’s nabbing the slides in your Zoom lecture or documenting a risky tweet before it gets deleted. 

Whatever your reason, here is how to screenshot on Mac, per Apple’s instructions. 

How to screenshot entire screen on Mac 

  • Press and hold the following keys: Command, Shift and 3. 
  • A window containing your screenshot should pop up. You can click on it to edit your screenshot or just leave it for a few seconds until the window disappears and saves your screenshot. 

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How to screenshot a portion of the screen

  • Press and hold the following keys: Command, Shift and 4 
  • A crosshair will be prompted; hold down on your mouse or trackpad button and use the crosshair to select the area you want to capture.
  • Release your mouse to take the screenshot.
  • As with taking a screenshot of your entire screen, the screenshot will pop up in a window and give you the option to edit.

How to screenshot a specific window 

  • Open the window 
  • Press and hold the following keys: Command, Shift, 4 and the space bar.
  • A camera icon should appear. Use that to click on the window to take a screenshot. 
  • You can eliminate the window’s shadow from the screenshot by holding “Option” when you click on the window to capture it.

You can cancel taking a screenshot of a specific window or a portion of the screen by hitting the Esc or “Escape” key. 

Screenshots save to the desktop as .png files.

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