If your workflow requires taking regular screenshots on your MacBook or Mac Pro, then you’ll need to know three common keyboard shortcuts, and a fourth if you have a MacBook with a touch bar. One of these techniques is a little newer. You might remember it from MacOS Mojave, but if you didn’t, rest assured that it has carried over to MacOS Catalina.
Stick around, too, because we also walk you through how to work with those screenshots once you’ve taken them. Apple gives you a fair number of options to easily save, delete and open the screenshot for markup, tools that I’ve come to appreciate and regularly use.
- Screenshot on Pre-Mojave Mac.
The advent of the Mojave update changed a lot of things for Mac users. It truly changed the way we take screenshots on Mac.However, if you could not upgrade your Mac to Mojave due to lack of space in the SSD or any other issue, you can use a few old Mac shortcuts to take screenshots.Here’s how you can take screenshots on your pre-Mojave Mac easily:
- Screenshot of an Entire Screen (⌘+ Shift + 3).
- Take Screenshot of a Selected Area (⌘+ Shift + 4).
Press ‘Command + Shift + 4’ to take the screenshot of a selected portion.Your Mac will ask you to select the area on the screen that you want to capture. Next, press the Spacebar after Command + Shift + 4.
- Annotating The Screenshots.
After you click on the thumbnail, the screenshot will open in the preview by default.Here, you can annotate your screenshot in several ways. It enables you to instantly annotate the screenshot before sending it to your friends or colleagues.
They include:
- You can draw symbols
- Add text to your image
- Include speech bubbles
- Crop the image
- Add your signature
- Rotate the images
- And much more
4. Bonus for Touch Bar MacBooks: Command-Shift-6
If you’ve got the 16-inch MacBook Pro or another model with the Touch Bar, did you know you can take a screenshot of what’s currently showing on the Touch Bar? Just hit Command-Shift-6 to take a very wide and skinny screenshot of your Touch Bar.
- Here are some of the best Screenshot Apps for macOS:
- Monosnap.
- Skitch
- SnapNDrag
- Lightshot
- Snagit
- Snapz Pro X
6. Where Do You Find Saved Screenshots on a Mac?
If you’re new to Mac, you might wonder, where screenshots go by default. Usually, screenshots get saved as PNG files on the desktop. Their default name format is – current date and time stamp. Hence, the name of a screenshot would likeHowever, if you change the save destination in the setting to the clipboard, you can paste the screenshot directly to the document without saving on your Mac.
- What Do You Do If Screen Capture on a Mac is Not Working?
Screenshot shortcut might now work sometime due to multiple reasons. Or it might be simply disabled.
Use these steps to fix this issue easily:
- First, heads to the Apple menu and open ‘System Preferences.’
- Next, click on the ‘Keyboard’ option.A new window will pop-up. Here, click on the ‘Shortcuts’ option.
- Go to the ‘Screen Shots’ option in the left menu.
- Check out whether all the shortcuts are active or not with the same combinations.
- Click on the ‘Restore Defaults’ option in the bottom right to activate all screenshot options.
- You can also change the shortcut and have new keys combinations.
- You might also face an issue where your screenshot shortcut is working, but you cannot save the screenshot. In this case, it might be occurring due to copyright issues of the third-party app. You can solve this issue by using a third-party screenshot application for Mac.