To take a screenshot on a Mac, you have several built-in keyboard shortcuts depending on what you want to capture:
Capture the Entire Screen
- Press Shift + Command + 3 simultaneously.
The screenshot will be saved automatically to your desktop, and a thumbnail may appear in the corner for quick editing
Capture a Portion of the Screen
- Press Shift + Command + 4.
- Your cursor will change to a crosshair. Click and drag to select the area you want to capture, then release the mouse or trackpad button to take the screenshot.
- Press Esc to cancel if needed.
- You can hold the Space bar while dragging to move the selection without resizing it.
The screenshot will save to the desktop, and a thumbnail may appear for editing
Capture a Specific Window or Menu
- Open the window or menu you want to capture.
- Press Shift + Command + 4 , then press the Space bar.
- The cursor changes to a camera icon. Click the window or menu to capture it.
- Hold the Option key while clicking to exclude the window shadow from the screenshot.
The image will be saved to your desktop with an optional thumbnail for editing
Additional Options
- Press Shift + Command + 5 to open the screenshot toolbar, which offers options to capture the entire screen, a window, or a selected portion, as well as screen recording features.
- You can set a timer, choose where to save the screenshot, and decide whether to show the mouse pointer or floating thumbnail
Screenshots are saved by default as PNG files on the desktop, and you can open them immediately for markup and sharing
. These methods work on all modern Macs, including MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac Minis running recent macOS versions
