How to Screenshot on Mac: Every Method Explained

You just switched from Windows and you’re staring at the keyboard wondering where Print Screen went. It doesn’t exist. Apple killed it — and honestly, they replaced it with something better. Mac has four distinct screenshot methods, each triggered by a keyboard shortcut, and once you memorize them you’ll never miss that single key again.

Method 1: Full Screen — Cmd + Shift + 3

This is the blunt instrument. Press Cmd + Shift + 3 and your Mac captures everything visible on screen. Every monitor, every pixel. If you have multiple displays connected, you get one file per display.

A thumbnail pops up in the bottom-right corner. Click it to annotate immediately, or wait a few seconds and it saves automatically. That’s it. No dialogs, no confirmations.

When to use it: Quick documentation, bug reports, saving something before it disappears. It’s the fastest option and the one you’ll reach for 80% of the time.

Method 2: Selection — Cmd + Shift + 4

Press Cmd + Shift + 4 and your cursor turns into a crosshair. Click and drag to select any rectangular area of your screen. Release to capture.

Here’s the part most people miss: while dragging, you can hold Space to move the entire selection rectangle without resizing it. Hold Shift to lock one axis. Hold Option to resize from the center. These modifiers work during the drag — not before, not after.

This is the method for capturing exactly what you need and nothing else. No cropping afterward required.

Method 3: Window Capture — Cmd + Shift + 4, then Space

Start with Cmd + Shift + 4, then press Space. The crosshair turns into a camera icon. Hover over any window and click — Mac captures that window with a nice drop shadow on a transparent background.

The shadow is automatic. If you don’t want it, hold Option while clicking the window. Clean edges, no shadow. This is genuinely useful for presentations and documentation where you want professional-looking window captures.

One detail worth knowing: this captures the entire window, even parts that are offscreen or hidden behind other windows. It reconstructs the full window, not just the visible portion.

Method 4: Screenshot Toolbar — Cmd + Shift + 5

Press Cmd + Shift + 5 and a floating toolbar appears at the bottom of your screen. This is the everything tool. From left to right, the options are:

• Capture entire screen
• Capture selected window
• Capture selected portion
• Record entire screen
• Record selected portion

The toolbar also has an Options button where you can set a timer (5 or 10 seconds), choose where files save, decide whether to show the floating thumbnail, and toggle whether the mouse pointer appears in captures.

This method was introduced in macOS Mojave and it’s the most flexible option. If you only learn one shortcut, make it this one.

Where Screenshots Save

By default, screenshots land on your Desktop as PNG files. The naming convention is Screenshot [date] at [time].png.

To change the save location: Open the Cmd + Shift + 5 toolbar, click Options, and pick a different location — Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, Preview, or any custom folder.

You can also change it via Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

That redirects all screenshots to a Screenshots folder inside Pictures. Much cleaner than cluttering the Desktop.

Copy to Clipboard Instead of Saving

Add Ctrl to any screenshot shortcut to copy to clipboard instead of saving a file:

• Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 3 — full screen to clipboard
• Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 — selection to clipboard

This is perfect when you want to paste directly into Slack, an email, or a document without creating a file you’ll need to delete later.

Markup and Annotation

Click the thumbnail that appears after any screenshot and you enter Markup mode. Here you can:

• Draw shapes (rectangles, circles, arrows, lines)
• Add text
• Add your signature
• Crop and rotate
• Highlight or redact areas

In practice, the Markup tools are good enough that you rarely need a third-party annotation app. The arrow and text tools handle 90% of what you’d need for tutorials or bug reports.

Screen Recording Bonus

Cmd + Shift + 5 also handles screen recording. Select “Record Entire Screen” or “Record Selected Portion,” click Record, then click the stop button in the menu bar when done. Recordings save as .mov files.

For recording with internal audio, you’ll need a virtual audio driver like BlackHole — macOS doesn’t capture system audio by default. That’s a deliberate privacy decision by Apple, and it’s the one real limitation of the built-in tools.

Quick Reference

Action	Shortcut
Full screen	Cmd + Shift + 3
Selection	Cmd + Shift + 4
Window	Cmd + Shift + 4, then Space
Toolbar	Cmd + Shift + 5
Copy instead of save	Add Ctrl to any above

Four shortcuts. That’s all you need. Honestly, most Mac users go years knowing only Cmd + Shift + 3 and miss the more useful methods entirely. Now you know all of them.