Screen Capture Mac Os Terminal

⌘ + Shift + 3 The screen capture shortcut on the Mac is one of the most useful tools I know. It grabs the screen and neatly places a.png file onto your desktop. But is this the highest quality screen capture you can get? 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 automatically saved as a PNG file on. MAC has a built in feature that lets you take screenshot on your MAC.

Here you can find Terminal, Disk Utility, Activity Monitor, Keychain Access and Console. Among the other powerful tools, you can find a Mac app called Grab. What is Grab and What You Can Use it For. Grab is a native Apple app available on macOS and Mac OS X that allows you take screenshots of your screen.
To take a screenshot of a window that you select, Click on Capture on Mac’s menu bar and choose Window. You can use the keyboard shortcut as well Command+Shift+W. A prompt will appear with instructions to choose the window you want to capture. Click on Choose Window and next click on the window you want to capture.

As you must have noticed, the screenshots that you take on Mac are saved to the desktop. A good way to avoid the possibility of your desktop being cluttered with screenshots is to change default screenshot location on Mac.

Mac Os Terminal Commands

Default Screenshot Location on Mac

Whenever you take a screenshot on Mac using Command + Shift + 3 or Command + Shift + 4 keys, the screenshots end up getting saved on the desktop of your Mac.

Keeping the desktop as the default Screenshot Location on Mac makes it easy for you to find the screenshot, in case you just took a screenshot.

However, this default setup has the potential to clutter up the desktop and it can also make it difficult to find the right screenshot, in case the desktop of your Mac is already filled with previously taken screenshots.

Hence, we are providing below the steps to Change Screenshot Location on Mac to a dedicated Folder on your Mac or any other location of your choice.

Change Default Screenshot Location on Mac to a Dedicated Folder

Follow the steps below to change default screenshot location on Mac to a dedicated folder on your Mac.

1. First create a folder on the desktop of your Mac to store screenshots. In this case we have created a folder called “Screenshots” and placed it on the desktop of our Mac.

2. Click on the Finder Icon located in the Task-bar of your Mac (See image below).

3. In the Finder Window, first click on Applications in the side-menu and then scroll down and click on the Utilities Folder (See image below)

4. In the Utilities Folder, click on Terminal.app (See image below).

5. Once the Terminal Window is open, type defaults write com.apple.screencapture location and do not press the enter key yet.

6. Next, enter a space after “location” and then drag the Screenshots Folder into the Terminal window. This will automatically enter the file path of the folder (See image below)

If you are unable to drag the folder into the Terminal window, simply enter the File path of the Screenshots Folder. Since, the Screenshots Folder is on the desktop, its File path would be Users/Username/Desktop/Screenshots. Once the File Path is enterred, hit the Enter key on the keyboard of your Mac.

7. Next, type the command: killall SystemUIServer and hit the Enter key once again.

This will change the default screenshot location on Mac to Screenshots Folder, located on the desktop of your Mac.

Get Back to Default Screenshot Location on Mac

At anytime you can get back to the default screenshot location (Desktop) setup by following the steps below.

1. Click on the Finder Icon located in the Task-bar of your Mac (See image below).

2. In the Finder Window, first click on Applications in the side-menu and then scroll down and click on the Utilities Folder (See image below)

3. In the Utilities Folder, click on Terminal.app (See image below).

4. On the terminal window, type defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/Your-Username/Desktop/ and hit the enter key

Note: In the place of “Your-Username” type in the actual username of your user account on Mac.

5. Next, type killall SystemUIServer and hit the Enter key on the keyboard of your Mac

This will get you back to the default setup on Mac for screenshots. All the screenshots that you take on Mac will be saved to the Desktop.

If you take a lot of screenshots on a Mac, you might end up with a cluttered desktop. This is because Macs automatically save your screenshots on the desktop. They are also saved as PNG files instead of the more widely used JPEG format. If you want to know how to change where screenshots are saved on a Mac, and the format they are saved in, just follow the steps below:

Where Do Screenshots Go on a Mac?

When you use keyboard shortcuts like Command + Shift + 3, your screenshots are automatically saved to the desktop. You can also right-click the floating thumbnail, which lets you save the screenshot to Documents or Clipboard.

How to Change Where Screenshots are Saved on a Mac

There are two ways to change the defaultscreenshot save directory on a Mac, depending on your operating system. Theeasier way is through the Screenshot app in macOS Mojave. For mac OS HighSierra or earlier, you have to use Terminal, an app for entering commandprompts to control your Mac. Below are the steps for each operating system.

How to Change Where Screenshots are Saved in macOS Mojave or Later

Go to the Utilities folder and open the Screenshot app. You can also open the Screenshot app by pressing Command + Shift + 5.
Click Options. The top tile of the menu will show your Save to options:
- Desktop – This is the default setting which saves the screenshot with the following time format: Screen Shot [date] at [time].
- Documents – This will save the screenshot to your Documents folder with the time and date as the file name.
- Clipboard – This will allow you to paste the screenshot to another app which can edit or view images.
- Mail – This lets you compose a new email in the Mail app with the screenshot attached.
- Messages – This will attach the screenshot to a message which you can send to a contact.
- Preview – This will launch Preview, a photo editing app. Your Mac will temporarily name the image file as Untitled until you change it to a different file name.
- Other Location – This will allow you to navigate outside of the locations previously listed to a folder of your choice. You can save to an existing folder or create a new one.
Choose a Save To option. Your Mac will remember the last one you have selected and will apply this to subsequent screenshots.

How to Change the Default Screenshot Save Location in macOS High Sierra or Earlier

Open Terminal. You can find the Terminal app in the Utilities folder.
Type the following command, followed by a space:
Note: Make sure to put a space after the word location, otherwise the command won’t work.
Drag the folder you want to save to into the Terminal command box. You will see that the file path will now be inserted as another command line in Terminal.
Press Enter on your keyboard.
Then type the following command:
Press Enter or Return. The next time you take a screenshot, it will be saved to the new folder you have created instead of the desktop.

How to Change a Screenshot to JPG and Other File Formats

By default, Macs save screenshots as PNG files, which are usually larger than JPG files. Both can be used for social media, but JPGs are more universally accepted. To save a screenshot as a JPG, use the Terminal to override the default format setting.

Open Terminal.
Type the following command, followed by a space: You can also choose to save your screenshots as other formats by default. You can save them as PDF files if you want to edit or open the image in Adobe. You can save them as TIFF files if you want to retain their original image data even after manipulating the image. Or you can save them as GIF files if you want the image to load quickly on the web. Just choose any of the following commands, followed by a space:
Note: Make sure to put a space after the file type, otherwise the command won’t work.
Hit Enter. The command will be saved to Terminal.
Test to see if the default option has been changed. Take a screenshot then right-click on the image. Choose Get Info from the contextual menu, then check what is written under “Kind” in the General section.

Once you know how to change the default screenshot settings on your Mac, you’ll be able to customize and improve the way you work with screenshots. Taking a screenshot on a Mac also takes some getting used to, especially for Windows users who are used to hitting the Print Screen key. If you need to improve your screenshot skills, check out our article about how to take a screenshot on a Mac.

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