Taking screenshots in Mac OS X —05 May 2014

It’s very easy to take screenshots on a Mac. If you know the right keys. Which are not at all obvious. And since I don’t take screenshots regularly, I tend to forget the magic keys. Before I forget again, here they are:

• Command-Shift-3: take a screenshot of the entire screen and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then select an area: take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-3: take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

In Leopard and later, while selecting an area, you can do more sophisticated things by holding down some keys:

• Space: hold down while selecting a region to lock the size of the region and move it with the mouse
• Shift: hold down while selecting a region to resize only one of the edges (horizontal or vertical)
• Option: hold down while selecting a region to resize with its center as the anchor point

I found these here: http://guides.macrumors.com/Taking_Screenshots_in_Mac_OS_X