Todays blog will help you to create useful screen shots and at the same time keep your Mac Desktop clutter free with help from the macOS Screenshot App.
macOS has a super useful Screen capture feature. If you find yourself creating documentation, graphical articles, blogs or social media content then screen shots will be something that you will most likely use all the time. At iLogix Computer Solutions we write a lot of documentation and reports for our customers not to mention blog articles and we use the macOS screen capture function regularly.
There are a few different ways to take a screen shot. These are mostly built around keyboard shortcuts, so first of all lets look at the keys we need.
The following "screenshot" shows us the shift key, the arrow pointing upwards, and the command key from a Mac keyboard. Note the red dots on the relevant keys.
By pressing shift+command and numbers 3-5 we can invoke the macOS screenshot app and use it in different ways.
shift+command+3 takes a screen shot of the entire macOS display.
shift+command+3 captures everything you see on your screen. If you have multiple displays click the display you want to capture and press shift+command+3. An image will appear in the bottom right corner of your screen before it is saved. If you click the image you have options to share the file, delete the capture or use markup.
Markup is a feature that gives you the ability to make changes and touches to the image, such as cropping the image, rotating the image or highlighting parts of the image for instance.
shift+command+4 gives you the ability to capture only part of the screen.
By pressing shift+command+4 on your keyboard you can use the crosshairs to draw a marquee of the area you want to capture. This is useful if you only want to capture a small portion of your screen.
As with shift+command+3 an image is briefly displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen giving the user the ability to share, delete and markup.
shift+command+5 opens the Screenshot app and displays a menu bar at the bottom of the screen. The menu allows the user to select the screenshot option they want to use as well as screen recording.
The options available are detailed in the following table.
The default location for screenshots is the Mac users desktop. After you capture the screenshot the screenshot is saved on the desktop in a file with the format Screenshot<date>at<time>, for instance Screenshot 2022-09-04 at 19.12.22.
Although the desktop may seem a convenient location iLogix Computer Solutions come across a lot of Mac desktops that are cluttered with screenshots. Over time this makes your desktop unmanageable even if you use the Stacks feature. A cluttered desktop also has a negative impact on the performance of your Mac. The great news is that you can change this location.
When we are discussing this issue with our clients iLogix Computer Solutions recommends that a folder is created inside ~/Documents called Screenshots. If you create the folder, or whatever folder you prefer wherever you want it and press shift+command+5 then click options.
You will see a menu will appear. Click "other locations" on this menu and using the Finder go to the folder you created for the purpose of screenshots and select it. Any screenshots from that point onwards will be saved in the new location.
Screenshots are a must for anyone who writes documentation about Mac computers, this is why iLogix Computer Solutions love screenshots.
We hope this blog article has been useful for you.