Where Are My Screenshots Mac
When you take a screenshot on your Mac, it will be saved to your Macs Desktop folder by default. This is done to make screenshots easy to find once you snap them. To locate your screenshots, either view your desktop to find thumbnails of your screenshots or locate the Desktop section in the Finder app.
What To Do If Screen Capture On Mac Is Not Working
The shortcuts for screen capturing may not work for a few reasons. One of the most common ones: they are simply disabled.
To fix that, do the following:
If the shortcut is working but screenshots turn out blank, the reason is often copyright issues with the third-party application on the screen. To solve that, use the Parallels Toolbox application for screen capturing.
Where To Find Screenshots On A Mac
Figure 6 The primary location for all screenshots on a Mac is the desktop
Once youre done taking them, where do screenshots on a Mac go?
Normally, screenshots are saved as PNG images right on the desktop. The format looks as follows: Screen Shot 2018-07-04 at 12.25.36.png. Alternatively, a user can copy Mac screenshots to the clipboard by adding Control to the key combination and then pasting it right in the needed document. Here at Parallels, we practice this oftenwe love taking a MacBook® screenshot and sharing it with coworkers. Its an easy and quick way to effectively communicate what we see on our end.
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Taking Screenshots With Grab
Dont feel like memorizing keyboard shortcuts? Grab lets you create screenshots directly from the menu bar. The app also lets you take time-delayed screenshots, just in case you need to set the stage before capturing an image on your display.
If youre using macOS Catalina or newer, Grab is not included. Instead, its features now reside in the Command + Shift + 5 key combination.
Step 1: Open Finder and select Applications listed on the left.
Step 2: Double-click on the Utilities folder and select Grab.
Step 3: Once you launch Grab, youll see an icon for the app on the dock you can also pin this icon for quick access later. Grab rarely features a window when open and instead runs almost entirely from the menu bar.
Step 4: Either use the Capture menu system to take screenshots or use the keyboard shortcuts detailed next to the respective command.
Question: How To Screenshot Your Computer Screen Mac

Take a screenshot on your Mac To take a screenshot, press and hold these three keys together: Shift, Command, and 3. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of your screen, click it to edit the screenshot. Or wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.
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How To Take A Screenshot On Your Mac: A Summary
While taking a screenshot on your Mac is a breeze, remembering the necessary shortcuts might not be. Fortunately, were here to help! Heres a quick list of the most common shortcuts and a brief description of what they do:
Shortcut | |
Cancels the screenshot process in selected modes. | |
Control | Combines with any of the above screenshot shortcuts to copy your capture to the clipboard. |
Note that third-party apps may have their custom shortcuts. As such, the functionality here may change depending on the app youre using. However, most apps are good at mapping key bindings to the Screenshot.app defaults.
Where Are Mac Screenshots Saved
By default, macOS saves screenshots to your Desktop. Youll see them as PNG image file icons on your desktop, with the filename Screen Shot and a date and time at the end. Double-click any screenshot file to open it in Preview, or load it in the image editor of your choice.
If youd like to choose a different screenshot save location, press Shift+Command+5. In the screenshots toolbar that appears, click Options, and then select a destination in the Save To in the menu. See the section below for more details.
Likewise, if youre taking screenshots and they arent showing up on your Desktop, press Shift+Command+5 and click the Options menu to see which Save To destination is currently selected.
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How To Selectively Screenshot On Mac
Press and hold Command + Shift + 4. Your cursor will change into a tiny reticule to the lower left that contains pixel coordinates. To select a rectangle area for a screenshot, click and hold the mouse button or trackpad button while dragging the pointer. If you want to start over without capturing the picture, press the Esc key. Release the click to take the picture.
Older Versions Of Macos
If your Mac is running something older than Big Sur, you can use the Terminal to change where screenshots save. It’s so easy. First, create your screenshots folder and name it whatever you want to call it. Now, let’s point all future screenshots to it. Follow these steps:
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Capture A Screenshot Of An Active Window
Figure 3 The process of taking screenshots of an active application
If you need a screenshot of a specific application that youre currently using, use this method. You can easily print screen an active window of any program, be it Safari, Chrome, Photoshop, or Microsoft Excel.
To capture a screenshot of an active window, do the following:
To copy a screenshot of an active window to the clipboard, do the following:
Figure 4 Keyboard shortcut for capturing the entire screen on a Mac
To capture a screenshot of a whole page, do the following:
To copy a screenshot of a whole page to the clipboard, do the following:
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If you prefer a third-party screen capture app, Snagit has everything you could need, but also comes with a $50 price tag. The same company also makes a free program called TechSmith Capture . Other free options include Skitch and LightShot, while Snappy can sync screenshots with the Snappy app for iOS.
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How To Edit Or Annotate A Mac Screenshot After Capturing
After capturing a screenshot using any of the methods listed above, by default, youll see a thumbnail pop up in the corner of your screen. If you ignore the thumbnail, the screenshot will be saved to your desktop once it disappears.
If you click the thumbnail, a screenshot edit and annotation mode will open in a new window. This window has no title or obvious app associated with it in the Dock, but it is part of the Macs built-in Screenshot app.
Using the toolbar icons at the top of the edit window, its easy to make changes to your screenshot before saving it. You can add text or a signature, crop or rotate the image, draw over it, and more.
Using the controls in the upper-right corner of the window, you can perform other operations. To save your image, click Done. If you want to delete the image, click the trash can icon. You can also press the share button to share the screenshot with others.
After clicking Done, your screenshot will save as an image file to your preferred screenshot save location.
Take Screenshots Using The Print Screen Key

If you want to capture a full screenshot, the dedicated Print Screen key on your laptop is the best option. It is also available on external keyboards if you have one connected to your laptop.
C:\Users\UserName\Pictures\Screenshots
Based on your laptop manufacturer, you may have to try different key combinations to capture the screenshot as a file. Refer to your computers user guide for more information.
If you dont see your screen dim, make sure the Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing option is enabled in Advanced Options.
You can access it from Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings.Open the Advanced tab and choose Settings under the Performance section.
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Where Is Image Capture On My Macbook Air
Image Capture is a free app that comes pre-installed on all MacBook Air computers. Despite its name, Image Capture isnt used to capture images of your screen as screenshots but rather to import photos from cameras and other devices.
The easiest way to find the Image Capture app on a MacBook is via Launch Pad> Other. It can also be located in Go> Finder> Applications.
- Can I change where Mac screenshots are saved?
Shoot Mac Screenshots Using Screen Sharing
If youve got multiple Macs, you can take screenshots via Screen Sharing, which is handy for being able to focus purely on what youre shooting on one Mac, while doing the actual shooting and saving on another.
You activate Screen Sharing on a Mac by checking the Screen Sharing box in System Preferences > Sharing. In the Finders sidebar on your other Mac, select the shared computer, click , and type in the username and password you use to access that Mac. The Screen Sharing app will launch, and the shared Macs desktop will appear inside a window.
Screenshots can be saved at any point using Connection > Save Screen Capture As .
If you take screenshots this way, be mindful of two things. First, ramp up quality settings , or your screenshots will look like compressed JPEGs. Second, if the shared computers display is bigger than the one youre sharing it with, turn off scaling in the View menu, or screenshots taken wont be at native resolution instead, theyll be scaled to the size theyre displayed within the Screen Sharing app.
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Tip : Take A Screenshot Of 1 Window
If you want to take a screenshot of a specific window that’s open, use a different key combination:
- Press Shift + Command + 4.
- Press the spacebar, which turns your mouse into a camera.
- Use the mouse to click the window that you want to take a screenshot of.
- The screenshot will appear on your desktop.
How To Print Screen On Mac With Preview
Preview is Apples native image and PDF viewer probably an essential part of your workflow. Its screenshot tool allows you to grab a part of the screen, window, or entire screen. The benefit of taking screenshots in Preview is that it automatically opens the screenshot youve taken in a new Preview window, so you can edit it resize, add annotations, etc.
How do you take a screenshot on your Mac using Preview? Its simple. In the app menu, select File > Take Screenshot > choose which part of the screen you want to capture > take a screenshot. From there, youre free to edit and save your screenshot to any location on Mac.
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Crop And Annotate Screenshots
Unless you change the floating thumbnail option mentioned above, your Mac shows your screenshot in a thumbnail in the bottom right corner of your display for a few seconds. If you click that thumbnail, youll be able to crop and annotate your screenshot. There are lots of tools at the top of this window: see this Apple support document for more details.
Command + Shift + 5 For More Options
Command + Shift + 5 is an option that arrived in Mojave, so as long as you have updated the operating system since 2018 you will have this ability.
Press Command + Shift + 5 and you will see a pop up appear on your screen with a number of options. These include: Capture Entire Screen, Capture Selected Window and Capture Selected Portion.
There are also options so you can make a screen recording of whats happening on your screen: Record Entire Screen and Record Selected Portion.
We often choose the Capture Selected Portion option which we have set to a certain dimension. This way we can always create screenshots at the same size.
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How To Take A Screenshot On A Macbook
Taking a screenshot on a MacBook is as simple as pressing the right combination of buttons, but there’s a more advanced capture option as well.
Taking a screenshot on a MacBook is no different than on any other Mac device from Apple and simply requires pressing the right combination of buttons at the right time. Whether a new MacBook user or just using one occasionally, understanding how to capture an image of the display can be a highly useful feature. Once captured, these images can be saved to the computer for use later or shared with others.
The Mac line is a popular option for many consumers, and especially those already invested in Apples ecosystem, and the company now offers enough different models to cater to the individual needs of most people. However, for those that have recently switched over from a Windows machine or a Chromebook, there can be a learning curve involved. This includes having to learn the new way of taking a screenshot on a Mac device.
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Take Screenshots On An Apple Watch

You may not think of this, but it is possible to take screenshots on an Apple Watch. To be able to do this, you must enable screenshots. Go to the Watch app on your iPhone, then tap General, and scroll down until you see Enable Screenshots toggle this on.
To take a screenshot on the Apple Watch, press the side button and Digital Crown at the same time. Apple Watch screenshots are saved to the Photos app on your iPhone.
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Where Can You Find Screenshots
The default location for screenshots on a Mac is the desktop. However, if you are taking multiple screenshots for a project or lesson, your desktop may become cluttered.
You can also go to Finder under your top menu bar. Click Go and then hold Option. You should see an option for Desktop show up. Choose this to see all of your screenshots in their own separate folder.
If you know you have a big project that requires screenshots, you may want to create folders ahead of time. Then you can quickly move saved screenshots to the right location.
How To Save A Screenshot As Jpeg
Mac screenshots are saved as a PNG file by default. The format has its benefits its uncompressed so you wont lose any detail, for example, but it has a large file size. If you want your screengrab to be as small
Since Apple removed Grab in the update to Mojave it also removed a really simple way to save a screenshot as a JPEG or TIFF file. The easiest way to change the format that your screenshot is saved as would be to open it in a photo editing app, such as Photos or Preview or Photoshop and Save As.
However, if you are feeling confident enough, you can make a change in Terminal that should mean your Mac always saves a screengrab as a .jpg, for example.
In older versions of macOS, you can use Grab to save screenshots as JPEG rather than PNG files. It is also possible to choose to save your shots as PNG or TIFF.
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