Capturing your Screen
How many times have you wanted to grab a shot of your screen to send to a friend or tech support agent? There are several ways to do this but here’s a handy guide to a few possibilities for making this happen:
- Capture the entire screen and save it: Command-Shift-3
- Capture the entire screen and copy it to the Clipboard: Command-Control-Shift-3
- Capture a selection and save it: Command-Shift-4, then click on one corner of what you want to select, drag the pointer to the opposite corner, and release the click
- Capture a selection and copy it to the Clipboard: Command-Control-Shift-4, then click on one corner of what you want to select, drag the pointer to the opposite corner, and release the click
- Capture a specific window, menu, icon, or menu bar & save it: Command-Shift-4 then space bar
- Capture a specific window, menu, icon, or menu bar and copy to the Clipboard: Command-Control-Shift-4 then space bar
But my favorite way of doing any of this is using the built-in app Grab. I keep this in my dock and use it instead of these key combinations. You can find Grab in Applications > Utilities. It gives you even more options by letting you capture a selection, a window, a screen or a timed screen.
Just one more tip: If you capture your screen don’t get fooled into thinking your screen capture is your actual desktop (but that is a favorite practical joke to play on someone else).
