Take Screenshot on Mac (Keyboard Shortcuts)

There is no Print Screen button on a Mac Keyboard as you may find on Windows, but there are some advanced options available that we can use to capture screens. You need to press certain key combinations in order to take a screenshot.

Here is how you can take a screenshot on a Mac OS X (like what we call print screen on Windows)

To capture complete Window

Command Key (⌘) + Shift + 3

This will take a screenshot of the entire window (just like print screen works for Windows) and you will find the screenshot on the Mac desktop.

To capture the selected portion of the screen

Command Key (⌘) + Shift + 4

When you press these combination keys a plus sign will appear with x and y to coordinate indicators, you can simply select the area that you want to capture, again the screenshot will be available on the Mac desktop.

To capture an Application window

Command Key (⌘) + Shift + 4 , then hit space-bar

When you press 3 combination keys a plus sign will appear, then press space-bar, a Camera icon will appear when you click your mouse button, only the active window screen will be captured, the screenshot will be saved

You would see that when you press any of the key combinations you hear a click sound and the screenshot image is stored by default on the desktop with a format Screen Shot YYYY-MM-DD at HH.MM.SS AM/PM with a .png extension (example Screen Shot 2020-08-25 at 1.17.56 pm)

If you want that the image should be copied to the Clipboard instead of being saved, you have the following key combinations to press.

To capture complete window and Save as Clipboard

Command Key (⌘) + Control(^) + Shift + 3

This will take a screenshot of the entire window (just like print screen works for Windows) and you will copy it to the Clipboard.

To capture the selected portion of the screen and Save as Clipboard

Command Key (⌘) + Shift + 4

When you press these combination keys a plus sign will appear with x and y to coordinate indicators, you can simply select the area that you want to capture, again the screenshot will be copied to Clipboard.

To capture an Application window Save as Clipboard

Command Key (⌘) + Shift + 4 , then hit spacebar

When you press 3 combination keys a plus sign will appear, then press the spacebar, a Camera icon will appear when you click your mouse button, only the active window screen will be captured, the screenshot will be saved to Clipboard