How to do print screen in Mac OS X
Yesterday, i wanted to do a print screen in Mac OS X but there is not print screen button in Mac keyboard :p This is the first time i use Mac machine. So i ask one of my friend to teach me how to do screen capture in Mac OS X.
There are few ways to do screen capture in Mac OS X.
Follow the steps below and you will be able to do a screen capture in Mac OS X.
- Switch to the screen that you wan to to do screen capture
- Hold down Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 3 and release all
- then use your mouse to click on the screen
- Done. You will see a picture file in at your desktop. That’s the screen capture picture.
You can also do a screen capture for a portion of your screen.
- Switch to the screen that you wan to to do screen capture
- Hold down Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4 and release all key
- Now, You will see the mouse cursor will change to +
- You can start to drag your mouse to select the portion you wish to capture.
- Once finish, you will see a picture file in at your desktop. That’s the screen capture picture!
If you want to do a screen capture for a particular application window, you can follow this:-
- Switch to the screen that you wan to to do screen capture
- Hold down Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4 and release all key
- Now, You will see the mouse cursor will change to +
- Press the space bar once
- You will see the mouse cursor change to a camera
- Now you can use the camera to select which application window to screen capture
- Once finish, you will see a picture file in at your desktop. That’s the screen capture picture!
It’s easy to do screen capture in Mac OS X right?
No need to open any program like Paint to paste the copy from clipboard 
Posted at March 11th, 2008 by chua
If you think this article helps you to solve your problem and clear your headache, feel free to buy me a drink :)
June 9th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
thanks for the help
July 24th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
DUDE!, I have been wondering how to do print screen with my mac, this method is easier than Windows — thanx a lot for the knowledge!
July 28th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
“It’s easy to do screen capture in Mac OS X right?
No need to open any program like Paint to paste the copy from clipboard ”
No it’s not – compared to pressing one printscreen button and then being to paste it wherever you like. 3 key presses and a click – whats the point.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:03 am
but on a pc, you dont have as many options as you do with the mac: screen shot of entire window, a certain area or a certain app window.
and c’mon… holding down three keys and letting go is not difficult at all. pc users should know (ctrl, alt, delete).
besides.. after you do that.. you don’t need to paste and save.. it saves it for you automatically. duh!
August 10th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Hy thanks for this, you’re a life saver. Grape, I think.
August 13th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
The fact I have to google this every month or so I need it says its not so easy. And I actually want it in the clipboard, so I ‘ll have to google further…
August 13th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
If you cant to make this a PC vs. Mac thing then let it be known that you can take a screen shot of individual programs, apps, full windows, and if you are using dual monitors you can screen shot both screens or just one of the screens… All using a PC
August 25th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Arghhhh it’s not working! I keep getting a chirping sound like it’s not a real combination of keys. I checked under keyboard shortcuts and it should work, but it’s not! FRUSTRATING!!
August 26th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Catherine-Grace: if you still not able to do the print screen, you can check your key settings at “System Preferences” => “Keyboard & Mouse” => “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab => look for “screen shot” and their related key.
Hope this help.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
What I need is a way to capture both monitors of my OS X setup. This method, and grab, and skitch, and all the other capture apps I’ve tried can only take a shot of one monitor at a time. Unlike print screen. Or every other windows screenshot app I’ve used.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:25 am
@Jon – you can do the same and more on a Mac – w/o special software
@Chris – it can work with dual-monitors as well… wonder why it’s not working for ya :/ hmm….
– thank you for the post! –
September 11th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
thanks a lot! this advice really saved me.. I’m a new Mac user and the more I know stuff about Mac the more I love it! Thanks again!
September 12th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Yeah this is great. Just used it in a game rather than needing Fraps or something like you do in windows.
I dont mind the extra keys, still only one hand and the bonus is you dont have to open a dedicated program to paste the capture. Its already on the desktop !
September 14th, 2008 at 1:44 am
cool!
Thanks for the tip! I love Mac. Hehehe
September 17th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Gaz, use Help in Finder instead of Googling.
If you want to put the screen shot in the Clipboard, rather than create a file, hold down the Control key when you press the other keys. You can then paste the picture into a document.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Thanks! It helped a lot!
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:52 am
One question came to my mind. How to specify to which folder the screenshots are saved? I would love to have a keyboard shortcut to control the folder.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Thanks a lot.
Once again, thank you so much.
A sunflower for you then
Need it for my task..
October 16th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Thanks. Grab kept making my document too small but this tip worked excellent.
Thanks again
November 6th, 2008 at 2:21 am
I wanted to capture the (phenomenal) results map for the Presidential election but couldn’t drag it, save a html page or pdf! Thanks for the tip!
November 9th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Thanks a lot for the info. It couldn’t be easier
November 15th, 2008 at 4:46 am
[...] 2. How To Screen Capture Using A Mac [...]
November 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Just got my mac and this is the niftiest thing I have seen so far.. Thanks for the tip.. 1000000x better and easier than windows!
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Friggin’ awesome! Thanks!
December 11th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Hi I tried and it is saving a file.
But it was not capturing the screen correctly.
The saved file shows like random lines! =(
I’m very new to mac (just got my macbook pro 15″ the other day)
My resolution is 1440×900. Does this matter?
Thanks in advance!
Christian
December 14th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Christian: you are not selecting the area correctly. ALT + Shift + 4 will allow you to select the area you want to capture. if you wan to capture window then you may wan to try ALT + SHIFT + 4 and release then follow by Space bar and select the window to capture. You may also wan to try ALT + SHIFT + 3 to capture the whole screen.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Cheers, this is awesome. =]. So much better than the “windows” way
.
December 24th, 2008 at 4:20 am
So we can do it with a mac. Thanks for the pointer on using the space bar, thats a new one for me that i have added to my shortcut glossary (whiteboard on wall) However, I can still get things done a lot faster on the PC…
prt scrn, open email, paste. no editor needed. I love my mac, but there are just some things that are so much easier to do on the pc. Also, here is the odd thing. My Mac crashes at least 1 time a week. The PC maybe once a month…
December 27th, 2008 at 4:05 am
I’m trying to love my Mac but it’s difficult at times. Many of the things I take for granted on my PC are just not very intuitive on the Mac, case in point, I had to search the web to figure out how to take a simple screen shot. Other previously intuitive functions are a nightmare on the Mac, setting up network printing, trying to configure my wireless connection because my Mac cannot seem to hold an IP and the only fix I’ve got is to restart. Simple things made hard!
January 8th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
surprised no one is complaining about the file … PNG?… those file types are HUGE.
is there a way to change out of PNG to JPEG… fucking christ!
January 19th, 2009 at 6:01 am
This is way more help than I was expecting to find. Excellent! Muchos Gracias.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
After being advised print screen wasn’t possible on a Mac, was happy to learn otherwise. Have even printed this screen to pass on to my tutor. Thanx!
January 20th, 2009 at 3:45 am
you CAN do a one window screenshot in windows…. its ALT and PRINTSREEN whilst on the correct window
January 25th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
This is helpful, but not easy. What a pain. Thanks for posting the answer because I could not find it in the MAC help which is useless.
January 31st, 2009 at 7:08 am
Searching some of the documentation on Apple’s site will give you these options. They’ve been standard on Macs since about System 7, I think.
Holding ctrl during any of the screen shot variations will send it to the clipboard.
Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-3 = entire screen to clipboard
Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-4 = selected area to clipboard
There used to be a built in pref for changing the file format. It was PDF but now is PNG which, for a screen shot, I don’t think is huge. You can use some Terminal tricks or any number of free apps (TinkerTool, Onyx, MacHelpMate) to accomplish this via a GUI.
January 31st, 2009 at 11:31 am
This is beyond helpful for my Mac OSX partition, however I also have windows running on my computer. I am an engineering student and our programs are mostly only PC compatible, unfortunately. How might I do it on that part of my computer?
January 31st, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Breanna Adams: For Windows, you can print screen using the Print Screen key on your keyboard. just press once and goto Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Paint. once Paint started, press CTRL + V. you will see the print screen image in the Paint application. from there you can save it as file.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 am
How to capture an entire window that takes up more than one screen, such as a web page where you have to scroll or arrow or page down? The screen capture utility should handle that use case no problem… but how? Or does it not do it? If not, which program do you recommend for that? Preferably free! Thanks
February 9th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Chrisco: If you are using Firefox, you may want to try Screengrab add-on – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146
February 15th, 2009 at 12:50 am
Hey, Thanks for the help – it works great.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Thanks man, that works great. I am new to mac too, but so far this is the best thing I have ever used.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
ohhhhhhhhhhhh is that how you do it. thanks.
i was trying to look for a key named “iPrintscreen”. Silly me…
March 11th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Hey thanks for information……..my doubt is cleared……..
March 20th, 2009 at 11:53 am
OMG thanks for the info! haha now i know how to print screen on my macbook :]
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:47 am
So we can prin screen in mac! And we have more options. Really helpful cause I had no idea . Thanks!
))
March 27th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Hahaha you have no right click or print screen button? Thats sooo sad. I guess holding 3 buttons down at once and clicking is way better! haha that was sarcasm btw… I know u Mac users are a lil’ slow.
March 31st, 2009 at 4:12 pm
YOU made me sooo happy!
April 12th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Really helpful tips! Thanks a bunch!
April 14th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
thanks so much for these tips, your instructions were uber-clear. you’re an angel sent to bless my essay! (:
April 30th, 2009 at 2:43 am
thx dude
May 18th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Hi, this doesn’t work exactly as the article describes for me. I have a 2009 iMac with osx 10.5.7. By pushing the key combo the cursor changes, and after selecting a region the camera sound plays, but there’s no file saved on the desktop?? Where are my capture files being saved? Argh!!!!
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:52 am
I’ve been using PCs FOREVER. A few weeks ago, I switched to a Mac. I’m in love, and really appreciate you taking the time to document how to do this.
May 24th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
HI thank for the tip but how can i do printscreen without saving the picture ? If that’s posible on a Mac ? Like for mac ; cmd + C and cmd + v = for windows ctrl + c + ctrl v ?
I’m sorry for my bad english, but I’m from Holland and only 13 years old,
hope someone can help me out ?
x
May 28th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Thanks a lot…
Thanks you also for Alex… for more hint of using the +ctrl
This really works!!!
June 7th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
thank you soo much
being a new mac user this was the simplest step to follow and the quickest to locate on the search engine
June 17th, 2009 at 1:36 am
This helped! thanks
June 25th, 2009 at 4:21 am
Thank you soooo much, helps a lot!!
June 25th, 2009 at 4:22 am
By the way, Mac computers are THE BEST!!!
July 1st, 2009 at 5:06 am
Thank you so much. This is so much easier on the Mac than on the PC.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
When I do screenshot on PC, I usually intent to paste straight into Powerpoint. This actually requires me to open the file up again to copy and paste. On the rare circumstances where I do need to save into file, I use IrfanView, which is more complicated than the Mac screenshot but duh..about four more clicks.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I know this post is old, but I just had to add a few things. First of all many of you are wrong, it is much easier on a PC. On a PC you just press the Prt Sc (Print Screen) button and then you can paste (Ctrl V) anywhere you want – into an email, into Paint, into anything. If you only want to capture the current screen on a PC, you just press the Alt button and the print screen button – Prt Sc. The great thing is that you can screen scrape anything and paste it anywhere – even into Photoshop – and alter it.
I hate when people say something is easier on a PC or MAC without fully knowing how to do whatever they need to do on both systems. On a Mac you have to press multiple keys to do something that takes one key on a PC.