If you have bought new Mac or switched over to Mac in 2020, here is my beginners guide for new Apple fans on How to take a screenshot (print screen) on a Mac & MacBook Pro. Specially useful, if you are looking for the Print Screen button present on most of the standard keyboards designed for Windows OS. It doesn't matter if you want to know how to screenshot on a Macbook Air or print screen on a Macbook Pro, both of them use the same methods to do screenshots, as do all other macOS devices. Normally, people are used to taking a screenshot by pressing the PrtScn button on Windows computers, but most modern Macs do not have dedicated keys. The name of the screenshot will be Screen Shot date at time.png (e.g., Screen Shot 2017-03-20 at 7.16.41 PM.png). Of course, you can easily change this setting. You can, in fact, save it anywhere. This article applies to all macOS computers. You can also take screenshots using the command line in macOS. Here is how: Open the Terminal app. To take a screenshot of your entire screen, press Command+Shift+3. Press all three keys at once and your Mac's desktop will flash, you'll hear a camera sound, and the screenshot will appear on your desktop as a.png file. Take a Screenshot of Part of Your Screen To take a screenshot of part of your screen, press Command+Shift+4 instead. To take a simple screenshot you have to hold the Shift-Command key and the 3 keys at the same time. Thanks to the feature, you may also choose exactly how much of.
As you must have noticed, the screenshots that you take on Mac are saved to the desktop. A good way to avoid the possibility of your desktop being cluttered with screenshots is to change default screenshot location on Mac.
Default Screenshot Location on Mac
Whenever you take a screenshot on Mac using Command + Shift + 3 or Command + Shift + 4 keys, the screenshots end up getting saved on the desktop of your Mac.
Keeping the desktop as the default Screenshot Location on Mac makes it easy for you to find the screenshot, in case you just took a screenshot.
However, this default setup has the potential to clutter up the desktop and it can also make it difficult to find the right screenshot, in case the desktop of your Mac is already filled with previously taken screenshots.
Hence, we are providing below the steps to Change Screenshot Location on Mac to a dedicated Folder on your Mac or any other location of your choice.
Change Default Screenshot Location on Mac to a Dedicated Folder
Follow the steps below to change default screenshot location on Mac to a dedicated folder on your Mac.
1. First create a folder on the desktop of your Mac to store screenshots. In this case we have created a folder called 'Screenshots' and placed it on the desktop of our Mac.
2. Click on the Finder Icon located in the Task-bar of your Mac (See image below).
3. In the Finder Window, first click on Applications in the side-menu and then scroll down and click on the Utilities Folder (See image below)
4. In the Utilities Folder, click on Terminal.app (See image below).
5. Once the Terminal Window is open, type defaults write com.apple.screencapture location and do not press the enter key yet.
6. Next, enter a space after 'location' and then drag the Screenshots Folder into the Terminal window. This will automatically enter the file path of the folder (See image below)
If you are unable to drag the folder into the Terminal window, simply enter the File path of the Screenshots Folder. Since, the Screenshots Folder is on the desktop, its File path would be Users/Username/Desktop/Screenshots. Once the File Path is enterred, hit the Enter key on the keyboard of your Mac.
7. Next, type the command: killall SystemUIServer and hit the Enter key once again.
This will change the default screenshot location on Mac to Screenshots Folder, located on the desktop of your Mac.
Get Back to Default Screenshot Location on Mac
At anytime you can get back to the default screenshot location (Desktop) setup by following the steps below.
1. Click on the Finder Icon located in the Task-bar of your Mac (See image below).
2. In the Finder Window, first click on Applications in the side-menu and then scroll down and click on the Utilities Folder (See image below)
3. In the Utilities Folder, click on Terminal.app (See image below).
4. On the terminal window, type defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/Your-Username/Desktop/ and hit the enter key
Note: In the place of 'Your-Username' type in the actual username of your user account on Mac.
5. Next, type killall SystemUIServer and hit the Enter key on the keyboard of your Mac
How To Take Screenshots On A Mac - How-To Geek
This will get you back to the default setup on Mac for screenshots. All the screenshots that you take on Mac will be saved to the Desktop.
