Mac OS X Taking Screen Capture using Terminal

This is for advanced users. You can even take Screen Shots using terminal command screencapture. There are loads of options available to capture a screen, You can create your own custom scripts to take screen captures.

Some Terminal Screen Capture Examples :

screencapture -i ~/Desktop/myScreenCapture1.jpg

When you fire this command, the mouse pointer will turn into a cross-wire (interactive mode) and you can select an area on the screen and this file will be saved as myScreenCapture1 with jpg image format extension on the desktop.

screencapture -ix ~/Desktop/myScreenCapture2.tiff

Now we have added the -x option, so no sound will be played when the image is captured.

screencapture -ixC ~/Desktop/myScreenCapture3.png

Now we have added -C option too, so no sound will be played when the image is captured and even the Cursor will be captured in the image.

List of options available:

-c: It will force screen capture as a clipboard instead of a file.

-C : If you want to capture the cursor as well as the screen you can use this option

-i: It will capture the screen interactively, a cross-wire will appear and you can select a selection of the window.

-m: This will only capture the main monitor.

-M: It opens the taken picture in a new Mail message.

-o: This will not capture the shadow of the window.

-P: This will open the taken picture in a Preview window.

-s: Allow mouse selection mode only.

-S : capture the screen instead of the window.

-t: Save image format to create, default is png (other options include pdf, jpg, tiff, and other formats).

-T: Take the picture after a delay of seconds, the default delay is 5 seconds.

-w: This only allows window selection mode.

-W: This starts interaction in window selection mode.

-x: This will not play sound when screenshot is taken.

-a This option will not capture the attached windows.

-r This option will not add screen dpi metadata to a captured file.

files: where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen.

Have Questions? Post them here!