You may have easy keyboard shortcuts for screenshots on your Mac, but each technique captures a different part of your screen.
You will need to know the 3 common keyboard shortcuts and a fourth when you have a MacBook, with a touch bar, if your workflow requires regular screen shots on MacBook or Mac Pro.
Table of Contents
Easy annotation
You get rapid access to the Markup tools to annote your screenshot if you embrace the Floating Thumbnail.
The floating thumshot can be swipped away or only slipped away and saved on the spot where you saved the screenshot last. To view the markup preview window (but not preview), click on the Floating thumbnail and it will open with all the mark-ups you get in the Preview.
You can right-click the Floating Thumbnail to:
- Save the screenshot to your desktop, Documents folder or clipboard
- Open it in Mail, Messages, Preview or Photos
- Show in Finder
- Delete
- Open in in the Markup preview window described above
- Close (and save)
The new Command-Shift-4 shortcut is slow to take on long Mac screenshots, but I can use it more to annotate screenshots without opening Preview and quickly removing screenshots that I know I have messed up immediately. Also helpful and appreciated are 5/10-second delay options.
Command-Shift-3
This keyboard shortcut captures a screenshot of your entire screen.
Shift-Command-4Â
Use this keyboard combo to make a crosshair of your cursor, which can be dragged to select a part of your screen. Release the pad or mouse button for the shot.
You have a number of other options after hitting Shift-Command-4:
- Press and release the space bar
- Press and hold the space bar
- Hold down the Shift key
Press and release the space bar
A small camera icon is the crosshair that can be moved across every open window. To take a screenshot of it, click on the window you want. This method takes a screenshot that features an edge with a little drop-shadow around the window.
Press and hold the space bar
(After the mouse button or trackpad is dragged to highlight an area): The selection area has the form and the size, which allows you to reposition the selection area on the screen.
It is very handy if a few pixels are off your initial selection area; just hold down the space bar to replace the bar before you release a screenshot with the mouse button.
Hold down the Shift key
(After the mouse button or trackpad is dragged to highlight an area): It locks the bottom of the crosshairs on each side of the selection area to let you move your mouse up or down to the bottom edge. This locks you.
Release the shift key and press again to replace the right edge of your selection zone without releasing the mouse button. You can switch between the right and lower corners by pressing the shift key and holding the mouse button or touchpad on.
Shift-Command-5
This combination, a rather new MacOS Mojave (2018) shortcut command, calls up a small panel with your screen capture options at the bottom of your display. Three screenshot buttons allow you to capture the whole screen, window or screen.
Also, you can grab the entire screen or a selection of it with the two video recording buttons. The left side of the screenshot panel is an X button to close, but you can also press the escape key to quit.
There’s a button on the right-hand side. It enables you to select where to save your screenshot — Desktop, Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Message or Preview — and set a 5- or 10- second time lag so that you can allocate items that might disappear if your screenshot tool is used.
In the lower right corner of your display, a small preview thumbnail of your just-catch screenshot is set to show Floating Thumbnail option, similar to that of the iOS screenshot procedure. You can turn off this thumbnail preview on your Mac, unlike your iPhone ($899 in Amazon). Finally, in a screenshot or video, you can select to show your mouse pointer.
You can grab the screenshot panel and drag it to a new place on your screen if it is in your way.
Bonus for Touch Bar MacBooks: Command-Shift-6
If you had a 16″ MacBook Pro or a Touch Bar model, did you know that you could take a screenshot of what is currently on the Touch Bar? Just click on Command-Shift-6 to take a large, skinny Touch Bar screen.
