How to Take a Screenshot on Your Mac: A Step-by-Step Guide

Taking a screenshot on your Mac is a straightforward process that can be done in several ways. Whether you want to capture a window, the entire screen, or even a portion of the screen, this guide will walk you through each step.

To take a screenshot of a window on your Mac, follow these steps:

1. Move the camera pointer over the window you want to capture.

2. Click your mouse or trackpad to highlight the window.

3. Press Command-Shift-4 on your keyboard.

4. The pointer will change to a crosshair. Hit the Space bar on your keyboard, and the pointer will change to a camera.

5. Move the crosshair pointer to where you want to start the screenshot and drag to select an area of your Mac screen.

6. Release your mouse to finish capturing the screenshot.

The screenshot file will be saved in PNG format on your desktop. If you don't want to capture the whole screen, press Command, Shift, and 4 keys at the same time on your Mac keyboard. This will turn the cursor into a crosshair pointer that you can use to select whatever part of your display you want.

Alternatively, the quickest way to capture your Mac screen is to hold down the Command, Shift, and press 3 keys at the same time. This will take a screenshot of your entire screen and save it to your desktop as a PNG file.

Since macOS 10.14 Mojave, the new screen capture utility has been added. You can now press Command-Shift-5 on your keyboard and start capturing screens as images or recording screen videos from the onscreen control bar.

Note that if you want to save a frame of certain video on Mac, you can refer to our guide on taking a snapshot of video on Mac. With the Mac screenshot keys combination, screenshots will be saved as image files.

Mac OS X has the power to save anything on your screen without any third-party screen capture apps. Screenshot capturing allows Mac users to capture anything displayed on their screen and save it as an image file.

Screenshot mac keyboard