The Macintosh operating system has always made it easy to capture a screen shot. A screen shot is an image of your computer desktop or an active window. Here's a summary of all the keyboard shortcuts you can use to capture your screen in Mac OS X. Entire screen: To capture the entire screen, press Command-Shift-3. The screen shot will be. By default, screenshots save to your desktop with the name ”Screen Shot date at time.png.” In macOS Mojave or later, you can change the default location of saved screenshots from the Options menu in the Screenshot app. You can also drag the thumbnail to a folder or document.

Your Mac comes with a native screenshot tool. Simply press Command-Shift-4 and it turns your cursor into a crosshair, which you can drag to select a portion of your screen to capture it. And while it’s useful for beginners, there is also no denying that lacks many useful features such as – photo editor, Email sharing, cloud upload, etc. This is where third-party screenshot apps come in. Imagine accessing your screenshots from any browser, leave aside a clipboard manager that sits a click away. These apps offer features like screen recording, smart annotations, even GIF support and almost all of them are free.

Let’s have a look.

Read: How to Convert a Screenshot to a Jpeg on a Mac

Best Screenshot Apps For macOS

1. Lightshot

Lightshot is one the most popular screenshot app for Windows, which is also on macOS.

It’s light, easy to use and absolutely free. Lightshot is a heavily loaded package and yet sits quietly on your menu bar. Press the default shortcut sequence ‘shift + cmd + 9‘ for a screenshot. The shortcut can be easily changed to anything you prefer from the app preferences.

One caveat though is privacy. All the screenshot uploaded to the cloud is public. So, when you upload the screenshot to the cloud and share the link with someone, they can change a few digits in the URL to access other screenshots. For example, https://prnt.sc/lk8ap7 is a valid screenshot and if you change the last digit i.e. https://prnt.sc/lk8ap7 or https://prnt.sc/lk8ap9, they also lead to screenshots by other users.

Pros:

• Annotations
• Copy to clipboard
• Cloud and Social Media direct upload
• Google image search

Cons:

• No Email sharing
• Uploaded screenshots are public

Download Lightshot Screenshot (free)

2. Monosnap

Monosnap might be one of the most complex apps on the list given the purpose its made for. It not only lets you take a screenshot but also has the ability to record your screen while the webcam footage sits as picture-in-picture mode in the same frame. The app settings let you customize actions before & after screenshot, sharing options, hotkeys, image format and what not.

Pros:

• Smart Annotations
• Cloud and Email upload
• FTP & WebDAV sharing
• Screen recording
• Record gif
• Blur tool
• Add multiple screenshots

Cons:

• Complicated interface and settings

Download Monosnap (free)

3. Snappy

Snappy mainly focuses on creating an easily accessible clipboard of all the screenshots that you take. You can drag and drop an image on any medium by clicking on the menu bar icon of the app. Alternatively, you can take a silent snap that doesn’t show the screenshot preview but simply copies the URL on the clipboard.

Pro tip: Right click on a snap for editing options. Double click to close a snap, there are no buttons.

Pros:

• Multiple snap clipboard
• Snap Library
• Annotations
• Cloud, Imgur and Email sharing support
• Direct URL copy
• Webpage preview snap via URL
• Customizable hotkeys

Cons:

• None

Download Snappy (free)

4. Apowersoft Screenshot

Apowersoft Screenshot also packages a color picker tool and a cross-hair tool to know the size of a frame on your screen. The screenshot feature also holds a number of editing options which pop-up on your screen after you select the frame of your shot.

Pros:

• Annotations with the blur tool
• Single entry clipboard
• Cloud and Social media sharing
• Color Picker

Cons:

• No Email sharing support

Download Apowersoft Screenshot (free)

5. Super Screenshot Lite

Don’t go by the name unless you are a 24*7 Trello user. Apart from a specific integration with your Trello account, the app offers only some basic tools. In fact, when you click the screenshot button on the menu bar the whole screen gets snapped and then you have to crop your area out if you need to.

Pros:

• Trello integration
• Annotations

Cons:

• No Cloud and Email Sharing
• No Social Media uploads
• No Clipboard or URL manager

Download Super Screenshot Lite (free)

6. Nimbus Capture

Nimbus Capture comes with some special mark-up tools like number stamps for easy step-by-step guide screenshots. The app also has screen recording options which can focus on the desired section of your screen. Creating a Nimbus account lets you manage your uploaded screenshots.

Pros:

• Annotations with the blur tool
• Number stamp mark-up
• Screen Recording
• Copy URL
• Nimbus cloud upload

Cons:

• No Email and social media sharing support
• No Personal cloud sharing

Download Nimbus Capture (free)

7. Xnip

Xnip offers a shadow effect around your screenshot just like the native screenshot feature on macOS, plus it works in selection mode as well. Just press ‘option’ key on your keyboard to toggle the feature while you are finishing your selection.

Pros:

• Smart annotations & selection tools
• Number stamps with captioned comments
• Single shot clipboard

Cons:

• No Cloud and Email support
• No Social media support

Screenshot For Mac Os

Download Xnip (free, $2 yearly for pro version)

8. Jumpshare

Jumpshare has something that no app on the list offers, GIF support. You can take a screenshot, a screen recording, and a GIF as well. The app requires you to log in via Google account and also supports workspace mode wherein you can add people to a shared portal. The plus version of the app offers more space and file size support but it’ll work without it.

Pros:

• Annotations and blur tool
• Screen recording
• GIF support
• Cloud support
• Workplace mode
• Easy URL copy

Cons:

• Expensive pro version

Download Jumpshare (free, $99 for plus version)

9. Snagit

Snagit is a commercial level software that provides almost all basic tools of photo editing and annotating apart from being a screenshot tool. Setting up the app could be a hideous process when compared to other apps on the list but the extra ton of features will make up for it. The app comes for a heavy price considering there are no upgrades but does give you a 15-day trial so you can test it before you spend.

Pros:

• Smart annotations with stamps and dialogue boxes.
• Photo editing tools
• Direct file sharing with all available sources
• Customizable interface

Cons:

• Expensive

Download Snagit (15 days free trial, $57)

10. Standardized Screenshots

Standardized Screenshots is not your regular screenshot app, rather a chrome extension. It takes a snapshot of the current window, adds a macOS-ish title bar and adds a shadow.

Using it is easy, just click the extension to snap a screenshot. It generates a preview which you can click to download the actual screenshot with frame and drop shadow included. There is, however, one small caveat that it doesn’t capture screenshots of some websites due to Chrome’s restrictions. Other than that, it works flawlessly. It really saves time when you have to capture screenshots every day for TechWiser.

Install Standardized Screenshots

Best Screenshot Apps For macOS

MacBook’s native screenshot feature is better than any of those on Windows. The quality it provides is very clean and the default shadow effects bring out the snap quite well. If you already didn’t know, you can also snap the touch bar on the MacBook Pro natively, just press Cmd+Shift+6. But if screenshots are something you use every day one of the apps on the list must fit your requirement. Like, Snappy for a better clipboard manager, Monosnap for better annotations and sharing options or maybe Jumpshare for GIF support. Take your pick and let me know the experience in the comments below.

You might occasionally need to capture the image on your computer screen so you can save or share it. If you've used a PC designed to run Microsoft Windows, you've probably used the Print Screen key on the keyboard to do this. If you're using a Mac, though, you'll notice Apple doesn't include such a key. Don't worry, though, because we're about to look at the keyboard combinations and built-in tools you can use on your Mac to capture what you need from the screen.

First, let's look at the keyboard combinations you can use to capture the image on your screen. The keystrokes for screenshots are multiple keys that should be pressed together. When you do this, press and hold the first key, then the second, and so forth, and immediately release all keys after pressing the final one in the sequence. The following are the keystrokes to remember for screen capturing:

Command+Shift+3 captures the entire screen and saves it to a file on your desktop.

Command+Shift+4 temporarily replaces your mouse cursor with a tool to select any rectangular portion of the screen. Click and drag the tool to make your selection. Your cursor immediately returns to normal after that selection.

Control added to the start of either of these sequences saves the image to the clipboard temporarily instead of to a permanent file. That allows you to copy and paste what you see on the screen into an application, such as image editing software.

If you don't use the Control key, your Mac saves these keystroke captures to your desktop by default. When you're capturing images this way, you won't see any system or app notifications to verify success. Instead, the system just plays a chime that sounds like a film camera snapping a photo. To see the files you're saving, you'll have to either open your Finder or minimize your windows to find the images saved on the desktop.

Mac OS X traditionally saved keyboard-generated screenshots as tagged image file format (TIFF) files. Macs switched to portable document format (PDF) starting in the 10.2 release of OS X, and to portable network graphics (PNG) files by 10.6. Later, we'll look at how you can convert any of these images to other file formats.

While keystrokes let you get a quick capture from the screen, they have limited options for what you're capturing. That's where the Grab utility comes in. Next, let's take a look at how to use Grab, including how to capture a specific window and how to time the capture to include things like mouse-over text or drop-down menus.

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The Grab Utility and Converting Screenshot Files

Screenshot For Mac Computer

Grab offers more features than keystrokes alone when capturing images from your Mac's computer screen. To open Grab, open your Finder, select 'applications' under 'places,' and expand 'utilities.' Grab should be one of the utilities listed there. Double-click to open the app from there in the Finder.

When using Grab, you won't see an application window on the screen until you've captured something. Instead, you'll just have the Grab icon in your Dock, showing that the app is running, and the Grab menu across the top when the app is in the forefront. When you're ready to take a screenshot, click the Grab icon to bring it to the forefront.

With Grab active, choose one of the following options under the Capture menu:

Selection — This works similar to the Control+Shift+4 keystroke, in that you're prompted to select a rectangular portion of the screen.

Window — When you select this, Grab prepares a 'choose window' button you can use when you have the window ready to capture. Click that button, then immediately click anywhere inside the window you want to capture. Even if the window is partially hidden by other windows, Grab will capture it as if it was the top window. However, any portion of the window that's off-screen probably won't be in the shot.

Screen — This works similar to the Control+Shift+3 keystroke in that it captures the entire screen as you see it.

Timed Screen — This lets you stage something on your screen that only appears when you have your mouse in a certain position, such as a drop-down menu or mouse-over text tips. The timer is about 10 seconds long, and Grab plays a beep with one second remaining.

After you capture a new image, Grab opens that image in a new window rather than saving it to a permanent file. Unlike an image editor, this window, called the Inspector, is only for previewing the image so that you can decide whether or not you want to keep it. Since the Inspector's contents are the same as part of your screen, keep a sharp look out for the edges of the Inspector so your eyes don't mistake them for your main screen.

If you need to redo an image, just close the Inspector with that image in it and click 'don't save' when prompted. If you want to keep it, use one of the save options under the 'file' menu as you would in other apps. Grab saves files in the TIFF file format only.

You can easily convert a TIFF or other image file to a different file format using the Preview utility in Mac OS X. Preview is the default app for opening images, so you can open Preview just by double-clicking the image you want to convert. With the image open in Preview, select 'save as' from the 'file' menu, and then use the 'format' drop-down menu in the save dialog to choose which format you want to convert to.

We just looked at two options for capturing images on your Mac screen. Both options — keystroke combinations and the Grab utility — are built into Mac OS X. Capture more on taking screenshots on a Mac by checking out the links that follow.

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Screenshot For Mac Desktop

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Screenshot For Mac Device

Sources

How To Paste Screenshot On Mac

• Adobe Developers Association. 'TIFF, Revision 6.0, Final.' Adobe Systems Incorporated. June 3, 1992. (Aug. 3, 2011) http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/tiff/TIFF6.pdf
• Adobe Developer Connection. 'PDF Reference and Adobe Extensions to the PDF Specification.' Adobe Systems Incorporated. (Aug. 3, 2011) http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
• Apple, Inc. 'Mac OS X: Shortcuts for taking pictures of the screen.' June 21, 2004. (Aug. 1, 2011) http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61544
• Apple, Inc. 'Mac OS X 10.2: Screen Shots Are Saved in PDF, May Be Converted.' Oct. 3, 2008. (Aug. 1, 2011) http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20935?viewlocale=en_US
• WC3. 'Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Second Edition).' 2003. (Aug. 3, 2011) http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG/