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How to take screenshots in OS X

Use these shortcuts to take pictures of the screen in Mac OS X. Screen shots are saved as files on the desktop as Picture 1, Picture 2, etc. 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.

  • Take a picture of the whole screen: ⌘-Shift-3
  • Take a picture of part of the screen: ⌘-Shift-4, then drag to select the area you want in the picture.
  • To cancel, press Escape.
  • Take a picture of a window, a menu, the menu bar, or the Dock: Press ⌘-Shift-4, then press the Space bar. Move the pointer over the area you want so that it’s highlighted, then click.
  • To drag to select the area instead, press the Space bar again. To cancel, press Escape.

You can also take pictures of the screen using the Grab application (in the Utilities folder).

Some applications, such as DVD Player, may not let you take pictures of the screen.

(Borrowed and modified from the Finder’s built-in Help)
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If you want to change the default location where the pictures are stored, or you want other options, consider the answers to this question to the UCLA OSXForum List:

Question: Is there any way to configure the OS/X screencapture utility to save the images in a specified directory? Ideally, it could ask me each time where to save it, but it would still be very useful to just always save
somewhere besides my desktop.

I vaguely remember seeing something about all OS/X apps having config
files stored somewhere and that they could be edited for really
specific preferences.

I did try going to the Keyboard Shortcuts Preference setting but that
didn’t show me the command that was being executed.

Answers:

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