Capture the Screen or Portion of the Screen on a Mac

Capture the Screen or Portion of the Screen on a Mac.

To grab your entire screen, on your keyboard, press Command (⌘)-Shift-3.

To grab a part of your screen, on your keyboard, press Command(⌘)-Shift-4. The mouse pointer changes to a cross-hair pointer.

This is how the cross-hair looks like

Move the crosshair pointer to where you want to start the screenshot. Drag to select an area. While dragging, you can hold the Shift key, Option key, or Space bar to change the way the selection moves. When you've selected the area you want, release your mouse or trackpad button. To cancel, press the Escape (esc) key before you release the button. You will find the screenshot as a .png file on your desktop.

Screenshots are saved as .png files on the desktop in Mac OS X v10.6 and later. They're automatically named "Screen Shot date at time.png."

To save your screenshot to the Clipboard instead of a file on your desktop, use Command(⌘)-Shift-Control-4.