Doesn’t everyone know how to take screenshots on Mac OS X? For lifetime Apple Fanboys (and girls) such mundane tasks are par for the course – so please bear with me and read on if this is old news to you. I’m a recent Apple convert. Up until January 2010, my only interactions with Apple were on a Macintosh back in secondary school (1997), and my iPhone. Coming from the wonderfully crashy world of Windows Vista was a baptism of fire, but where the hell was the ‘Print Screen’ button? How the hell could I take a bloomin screenshot on this new fangled thing? Here’s how.
- Before I get started, by default (I think!) your screenshots will be saved to your desktop, and as PNG files. You can specify different locations for your screenshots, but I don’t know how – the desktop works just fine for me.
Ok, here goes:
- Find your ‘Command‘ key on your keyboard – it’s the one with the Apple logo on it on newer Macs.
- Hold down ‘Command‘ + ‘Shift‘.
- If you’d like a full screenshot of the entire screen, hit ‘3‘.
- If you’d like to select which bits you’d like to take a shot of, hit ‘4‘. A lovely looking crosshair type cursor will appear. Just click and hold, drag the crosshair over the area you’d like to take a screenshot of, et voila – your customised screenshot should be on your desktop.
If you’d like to stop your screen-shotting at any time, just hit the wonderfully handy ‘ESC’ key (top left of your keyboard most of the time).
Just to test/show you what I mean, here’s a full screenshot.
And here’s a ‘crosshair’ selected bit of a screenshot.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Hugh,
Thanks for the tip.
Another way of getting a screenshot is to use the Grap application. It’s in the application folder and can be dragged to your menu bar for quick access.
Hey Adrian,
Thanks for that! The more tips I can get – being a Mac newbie – the better!