ARCHIVED: In Mac OS X, how can I capture the contents of a window or the screen?

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In Mac OS X, to take a screenshot (including any menus you may have selected), press Command-Shift-3. You will hear a camera shutter click, and an image of your current screen will be saved to your desktop in PNG format. In Mac OS X 10.6 and later, it will be named with the date and time that you take the screen shot. In Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier, it will be named Picture N, where N is a number (e.g., Picture 1, Picture 2, etc.).

To take a screenshot of only a portion of the screen:

  1. Press Command-Shift-4. Your mouse pointer will change into crosshairs.

    Note: If you want to cancel at any point in this process, press Esc.

  2. Move your mouse to the upper-left corner of the area you want to capture. Hold down the mouse button, drag the mouse to the lower-right corner of the area you want to capture, and then release the mouse button.

You can also take screenshots of individual windows, menus, and icons:

  1. If you want to take a screenshot of a menu, select it. If you want to take a screenshot of a window, click it to bring it into focus.
  2. Press Command-Shift-4, and then press the Spacebar. Your mouse pointer will change into a camera.

    Note: If you want to cancel at any point in this process, press Esc.

  3. Click the window, menu, or icon you want to capture.

Note: Whether capturing an image of the screen, a portion of the screen, a menu, an icon, or a window, if you also hold the Ctrl key down along with other keys, it will save the image to the Clipboard rather than a file.

Grab

You can use Grab, which is normally installed in /Applications/Utilities, to take screenshots of all or parts of your screen. It has a timed function that lets you include a pull-down menu or change which application will be active in the screenshot. You may also change the appearance of the mouse pointer or remove it from the screenshot altogether. Grab saves your images as TIFF files, which you can display in Preview or modify in a graphics editor, such as Adobe Photoshop.

Snapz Pro

For more advanced screen capture features, including video capture, see Snapz Pro X, available as shareware from Ambrosia Software.

This is document ajyp in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 13:01:37.