How to Capture Your Entire Mac Screen
A single keyboard command will take a snapshot of everything on your Mac’s screen, including the menu at the top. To do so, press Command+Shift+3. In newer versions of macOS, a preview of the image will appear in the lower-right corner of your display. From there, you can drag the screenshot directly into an email, text message, or other program if it’s ready to use as-is. If you miss the preview, the system will save the screenshot to the Desktop by default. The title will be “Screenshot [Date] at [Time],” for example, “Screenshot 2020-07-07 at 1.52.03 PM.” Hold Control while taking the screenshot to copy it to the Clipboard. You can use this shortcut whether you’re capturing the entire screen or just part of it.
How to Capture Part of Your Mac’s Screen
You may just want to snapshot a specific section, and you can use a keyboard command for that, too. Here’s what to do:
How to Capture a Specific Window in macOS
You don’t have to manually select to capture the contents of a single window. You can also quickly copy its contents with an extra keyboard command.
How to Take a Screenshot With the macOS Screenshot App
In macOS Mojave (10.14) and later, you can access even more options with a dedicated Screenshot app. Along with static screenshots, you can also record what is happening on your screen.
How to Record Your Screen With the macOS Screenshot App
The built-in Screenshot app also includes options for capturing a video of everything you’re doing. Screen recordings are handy for demonstrating processes and creating shareable instructional videos. Here’s how to make one with the Screenshot app.
Capture Entire Screen: Instantly take a screenshot of everything visible on your display.Capture Selected Window: Take a screenshot of a single window. Again, hold Control while clicking the window to remove the background from the final image.Capture Selected Portion: Drag out a box to highlight a specific part of the screen and only grab that area.
Save To: Choose an option from the list to tell macOS where to save your screenshots and captures. Use Other Location to browse to a specific folder. Timer: Set a delay between when you press a capture button and when the capture occurs. Microphone: Choose the sound input, if any, for screen recordings. Usually, you’ll see either None or your Mac’s internal hardware, but if you have a USB mic connected, you can choose that, too. You can’t change this setting when a screen recording is active. Show Floating Thumbnail: Toggle whether or not the preview image appears after you take a screenshot or recording. Remember Last Selection: Select this option to tell Screenshot to use the same selection box for subsequent captures. This setting saves time if you’re taking multiple shots of the same area. Show Mouse Pointer/Show Mouse Clicks: Keep this setting off to make your pointer invisible in screenshots and recordings.
How to Record Your Screen Without the Screenshot App
If you’re running macOS High Sierra (10.13) or earlier, you don’t have access to the Screenshot app, but you can still record your screen using Quicktime Player. To do so, select File > New Screen Recording.
Record Entire Screen: Start recording everything visible on your screen. While you’re recording, you can switch between windows and programs and you use your Mac as you normally would.Record Selected Portion: Drag out a box to specify which part of the screen to record.
Press Esc to cancel. Just like in Screenshot, you can record all or part of your screen. Press the Stop button in the menu bar to stop recording. Your Mac saves screen recordings you take in Quicktime to the same location as screenshots.
