Eight Clicks
The other day I watched someone take a screenshot on a Mac. She moved the mouse down to the
dock, and clicked Finder. Then she opened up the Applications folder and double-clicked the
"Grab" app. Then she clicked "Capture" in the menu bar, and then finally clicked "Selection".
Click, drag, release ... finally she took a screenshot.
Not gonna lie. This was painful for me to watch.
What took about 30-40 seconds could have been done in 3 seconds, maybe less, using one of the
shortcuts below.
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Today's Shortcuts
There are a bunch of useful shortcuts for taking screenshots. These are all global shortcuts, so
no matter what app you're in, they'll work.
Most of the time, when I see someone take a screenshot, they'll head to the Desktop where it
gets automatically saved. But usually when I take a screenshot, I just want to send it to
someone or paste it somewhere and be done. No need to save a file. There's a
way to do this. Here's my order of preference for taking screenshots:
Copy a portion of the screen
shift
+ command
+ control
+ 4
Once you press that, you can click to drag an area of your screen; when you stop dragging,
the screenshot goes straight to your clipboard, like as if you copied some text. Just press
command
+ v
wherever you want to paste the image. A message, a document, whatever.
Copy a full window screenshot
shift
+ command
+ control
+ 4
then space
Same thing as above, but this time you'll copy an entire window, not just a portion of it.
This works on application menus too. You should see a camera icon - just click the window
you want to copy. Press command
+ v
to paste the screenshot wherever.
Copy a screenshot of the whole screen
shift
+ command
+ control
+ 3
Once again, this copies the whole screen to the clipboard. Pressing command
+ v
will paste it.
Open the Screenshot app macOS Mojave Only
shift
+ command
+ 5
This is a new feature in macOS Mojave; it replaces the "Grab" app in older versions of
macOS. This allows you to be a little more fine-tuned with what you want to do with your
screenshot, but it also allows you to record a video of your screen. In my opinion,
awesome for screen recordings, but for quick screenshots that I can just
paste into a message, I'll use the first shortcut.
Save your screenshots
If you need to save your screenshot for future reference, the keyboard shortcuts above still
work - just don't hold the control
key down while you execute them. This will send the screenshot right to your desktop.
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