To take a screenshot on a MacBook, you can use several built-in keyboard shortcuts:
- Capture the entire screen: Press Shift + Command (⌘) + 3 simultaneously. The screenshot will be saved automatically to your desktop as a .png file
- Capture a portion of the screen: Press Shift + Command + 4 , then drag the crosshair pointer to select the area you want to capture. Release the mouse or trackpad button to take the screenshot, which is saved to the desktop
- Capture a specific window or menu: Press Shift + Command + 4 , then press the Space bar. The pointer changes to a camera icon. Click the window or menu you want to capture. To exclude the window shadow, hold the Option key while clicking
- Open the Screenshot toolbar: Press Shift + Command + 5 to bring up an on-screen menu with options to capture the entire screen, a selected window, or a portion of the screen, as well as options for screen recording
- Capture the Touch Bar (if available): Press Shift + Command + 6 to take a screenshot of the Touch Bar
Screenshots are saved by default to the desktop with filenames starting with "Screenshot" followed by the date and time
. Additionally, if you want to copy a screenshot to the clipboard instead of saving it as a file, hold the Control key along with the other keys in the shortcuts above
. These methods work on recent MacBook models and macOS versions, including the latest updates
. In summary, the most common shortcuts are:
Action| Shortcut
---|---
Capture entire screen| Shift + Command + 3
Capture selected area| Shift + Command + 4
Capture window/menu| Shift + Command + 4, then Space bar
Open screenshot toolbar| Shift + Command + 5
Capture Touch Bar (if present)| Shift + Command + 6
This covers all the main ways to screenshot on a MacBook
