Another cool trick: Acorn image editor can take screenshots of the whole desktop environment (all windows, menus, etc) and put them in separate layers. You can then rearrange them as you wish.
That's a great idea. Capture the data first, then sort it out.
The new GNONE screenshot tool is similar because it capurures everything as soon as you hit Print Screen, but it still forces you to decide what to save immediately. It would be nice if has an option to save everything so you can pick out what you want in post.
I also want something like this for audio. Record every audio stream on my machine as different tracks. Then I can select which ones I want later.
This isn't totally screenshot related, but TextSniper is nice for quickly getting OCRed text from a selection on your screen, directly into your clipboard.
True but that only applies to images displayed using the standard image library. TextSniper will capture text from any text displayed on screen, not just within an image. I use it often to pull text from things shared in Zoom. You can do it with the built-in Livetext but you have to do a screen shot, them bring that up in preview to get the text OCRd. TextSniper makes it a single operation.
When the beta containing Live Text was first released it was M1 only but by the time it was released, Intel support was included. A lot of people only remember the first impression.
You can also easily stitch something like that together yourself.
After `brew install pngpaste tesseract` (the latter is a dependency of the great OCRmyPDF tool btw), you can set `alias ocr="pngpaste - | tesseract -c debug_file=/dev/null stdin stdout | pbcopy; pbpaste"`.
I like having this alias better than macOCR because the workflow feels more ergonomic: You first cmd + shift + 4 to select text and then type `ocr` with the result being printed to stdout and being saved in your clipboard. With macOCR I have to go to the terminal first to initiate the process, then go back to what I want to screenshot etc.
There isn't that much practical reason to include the shadow though. In fact it tends to just make the important stuff smaller when sharing with someone because there's a bunch of border space surrounding the content, and whatever they're viewing in will show all of that unless they zoom in.
Some kind of clipboard manager should be able to munge it that way (Ok, it's 15 years since I wrote clipboard code in "OS X") - a background app and clipboard manager that basically removes style info from the items on the clipboard.
Really wish this was the default, with an option to turn on "paste with formatting". It'd be interesting to see with telemetry how many users choose that.
FWIW, in my many decades of using computers, I've never once wanted to paste with styles as whatever app is getting pasted into inevitably (without exception, like 100% of the time) "guesses" the formatting incorrectly.
There were some amazing workarounds to the default discussed her recently. One suggested pasting into the browser url field then copying and pasting out of it.
It's not a very ergonomic hotkey, though. I click the preview that appears in the bottom right to open, CMD-C to copy, and then click the trash icon to not save.
you can also flip these keyboard shortcuts around, which I did for the cmd-shift-4, as I almost always want it to the clipboard without persisting as a file
people love to talk about how many useful features MacOS has and how user-friendly it is but too many are buried behind a keyboard shortcut with no other way to access.
And no "read the manual" isn't it. From certain scale the manual should be out of the window and UI should accomodate for people to learn while using it.
It isn't hidden behind a keyboard shortcut. CMD+Shift+5 exposes the full screenshot UI, and under the clearly-named Options button is a menu that lets you pick the clipboard as the place to save.
Holding CTRL is just a... well... "shortcut" for that.
I use the non-UI snapshot feature a lot more often than video capture so didn't realize that. I guess it was just a more general comment that comes from things like the switching window/app hotkeys. In this instance, there is another issue with finding out holding CTRL does what it does.
That is literally the definition of "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut" - you have to be told or lookup CMD+Shift-5 before you can get to the full screenshot UI. It's been a while since I first used MacOS, but I don't remember it telling me how to do that.
> That is literally the definition of "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut" - you have to be told or lookup CMD+Shift-5 before you can get to the full screenshot UI.
Or more likely, new users search for "screenshot" in Spotlight the first few times, and if they do this enough maybe Google "mac screenshot shortcuts" (which leads them to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201361).
That's fair, particularly the "Googling it" part. Still don't think it falls under "intuitive" - it's not something I'd just try or figure out without somehow looking it up.
Effectively, with a better name. This also strikes me a perfect use case for a Touch Bar since it’d be very helpful for a subset of users but wasted space for others.
I didn't give any value judgement to it and I don't have any suggestions as I really haven't spent a lot of time on that problem space. If I become an OS developer I'll give that problem some thought. But the idea that Mac is somehow "intuitive" is laughable, IMO (I say that as someone who has used a wide variety of computer OSes since the 80s).
It's intuitive to do the basic stuff casual users need. If you want to go beyond that, you figure out how by doing some basic research. The OS isn't going to upload an entire reference manual into your brain as soon as you boot it for the first time.
And no one but you is claiming anything about manuals being beamed into brains. I disagree with the idea that MacOS is any more intuitive than any other modern OS (which is the claim that Apple and that I've heard others, make; I'm not saying you are making that claim necessarily). And to bring this back on point, to my very specific original comment, the poster I was responding too said this wasn't "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut" when it most definitely was. Not sure we need to delve into the nitty-gritty of how people learn OSes in this thread anymore than we have.
> And to bring this back on point, to my very specific original comment, the poster I was responding too said this wasn't "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut" when it most definitely was
I'm that original poster. The comment I responded to was clearly referring to holding "ctrl" in order to save to clipboard, not referring to the screenshot ability itself (which as others have mentioned, is not hidden behind a keyboard shortcut, but is an app in Applications/Utilities)
I maintain my comments and opinion, still "hidden behind a shortcut", even if you can find it as an app also. Or even if all you're referring to is the Ctrl modifier.
The quality I take from it, is that the cmd/option/shift behaviours as modifiers, are policed well, and its like emacs: there's an overall consistency to what they want you to do, burned into muscle memory.
You cannot realistically make every single cmd+<letter> mnemonic. They do the best they can inside the circumstances, and then having chosen a base key, they say "ok. what do we bind to the alternates via option/shift" so it makes contextual sense.
I regard that as seeking intuitive behaviour. You are invited to (subconsciously) consider CMD+key as the base to learn, and then CMD+OPTION or CMD+SHIFT variants as the obvious alternates.
The key here, is ownership of the UI/UX: they police this. Much though Microsoft tries, it doesn't police this well enough across the independent app vendors outside of a tiny core of functions. Between Gnome and KDE, there is no policing.
I said emacs, because the basics of modifying lines of text in most things now, are emacs line modifiers by inheritance: because the X10-> X11 -> XOrg uplift means that the web omnibar and text boxes are inherently derived from X, the keystrokes to edit text are inherited from MIT X which inherited from MIT emacs.
As a VI user I just had to come to terms with this: Sure, you CAN force override them to VI friendly form, nobody does:
we're all emacs keystroke users in this narrow sense. Emacs won.
are you not familiar with the concept of onboarding? Many websites and apps have this tour thing that highlight things that user haven't used, when appropriate.
The Mac does have onboarding, and it covers the basics. If it got into every single feature that someone calls "unintuitive," the onboarding would be 27 hours long
There's a continual onboarding process in iOS, the Tips app, which I think tries to tell you details when it sees you doing the basics of some feature.
is it in the form of non interactive animation? Yikes. If not, there is no problem with 27h, you just don't be ridiculous to do it all at once, instead of contextually.
> you have to be told or lookup CMD+Shift-5 before you can get to the full screenshot UI
No, you don't. You can either search in Spotlight or go to Apps->Utilities, and it is there, along with activity monitor(aka task manager)/terminal/etc.
I agree with parent, for example even after pressing cmd+shift+5 there's no indicator or hint that you can press `space` to capture a single window. I don't see how any user would discover that functionality, and I regularly see people surprised they can do that here on HN.
Discoverability on macos is atrocious, and even after few years on it I sometimes struggle with basic things
A great thing is that they’re very seldom not also in one of the app menus. Memorizing cmd + ? (Help menu search, sorta like Spotlight for the app and can find any standard menu items) is often a lot easier than remembering a bunch of other commands, and great for discovering them.
Another great thing is they’re generally quite consistent across apps, so memorizing one is usually applicable system wide. And another great thing is that if you don’t like the defaults (or have a menu item you wish had a shortcut in the first place), they’re almost always configurable.
I've been using computers too long to be able to "see" them through the eyes of a new user. But being user-friendly doesn't mean making every single feature user friendly or discoverable through visual manipulation. It means making the most common tasks user friendly and discoverable. The vast majority of users can be productive on macos without ever using a single keyboard shortcut.
I think macos does this better than pretty much any other desktop OS. Granted the bar isn't very high.
> being user-friendly doesn't mean making every single feature user friendly or discoverable through [using the software]
Why not?
> The vast majority of users can be productive on macos without ever using a single keyboard shortcut.
If you're not using keyboard shortcuts you definitely do not have flow. Again, why should the standard be so minimal ('can eventually complete a task') and not involve efficiency, fluidity, joy, mastery, etc.?
It's not hard to do better when you leverage searches that simultaneously expose functionality and alternative ways to invoke it (e.g., keybinds, menu paths, app names, etc.). The example that blew my mind is Emacs with a nice fuzzy filtering search like you get pre-configured with Spacemacs or Doom, but macOS also has two great examples built in: Spotlight and the global app menu search.
Me too. I'm sure a lot, but I bet not all. But copy paste shortcuts can be discovered via direct ui manipulation - you click the edit menu and it shows the keyboard shortcuts. I actually copy/past with a right click nearly as often as with a keyboard shortcut. But I guess right click could be considered a "hidden" feature.
Then in Preview you can hit cmd-shift-a to annotate the image. When you're done, cmd-a to select all, then paste wherever applicable. Nothing saved to disk!
TinkerTool lets you edit the Destination Folder, Format and some additional screenshot settings. I much prefer this because it allows me to quickly check the current setting as opposed to a "black box" CLI command.
When you are selecting an area you can hold option when dragging to move the top and left sides of the rectangle. This is useful to select exactly the right area.
Oh my goodness thank you so much macOS for giving us a set of awesome screenshot tools and a way to edit them immediately in Preview.app. (Capture to clipboard, then command-N in Preview defaulting to new-from-clipboard.)
It’s so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker in chat or a task tool.
I recently discovered that with my trusty Logitech G203 I can write cursive on my images with about the same legibility as I can on a whiteboard. Very pleasing.
I was a Windows guy for a long time, most of my life actually. Then circumstances forced me to use a Mac for a period of time and I switched. Now I can barely remember half of what I used to jump around Windows. Our cognitive load really isn't built to handle mastery of multiple wildly different operating systems, IMO. Not many people claim to be both Windows and Mac power users, though I'm certain some of those do exist.
It’s so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker in chat or a task tool.
You can make it even faster by cutting out the Preview step. When the thumbnail of the screenshot appears in the lower-right corner of the screen, click it, and then you can use Markup to annotate the image right there, and then share it as needed.
Since I don't have your Logitech, I don't know if this method will support your hand-writing step. But it's worth a try, and is still useful for drawing circles and arrows and things on screenshots before firing them off to a coworker.
1. If the program I'm trying to share with is available in the Share control, I use that.
2. Since I already have a Screenshots folder in my dock that displays as a fan, and is sorted by most recently added, I click "done" on the annotated screenshot, then I can click on that folder in the dock, and it's right there, ready to be dragged into any other application.
This is a reasonable way of dealing with it. I've just created the dock folder and now it's a lot easier to get to (except that I have dock as minimal as possible, so it's still a little fiddly). It does feel like just hitting ctrl-c in annotations should copy to clipboard.
I know pretty much every other combination of screenshot shortcut mentioned here, but this workflow has irked me ever since they added the annotation tools. I can work with this, thanks!
You are in good company. I often screenshot two things, arrange the windows next to or on top of each other, screenshot that and use it as the backdrop for my world domination plans / next releng planning meeting.
Not sure if I am missing something. But it is the default implementation in macOS. Just make sure "show floating thumbnail" is turned on (CMD+SHIFT+5 then click options).
I never found screenshotting on macOS intuitive. Using ShareX on Windows is like night and day. No need to memorize different shortcuts for each kind of screenshot. Just a single shortcut to enter screenshot mode. Then it's
* left click to capture full screen
* hover over a window and left click to capture a specific window
* click and drag to capture a region
* right click to cancel
There's also annotation and drawing tools directly in the screenshot mode. Imo this is way better than how macOS opens the editor afterwards. Because for the times you don't need to annotate, you still have to close the preview window. In other words:
MacOS
* annotation flow: start => capture => annotate
* normal flow: start => capture => close preview
ShareX
* annotation flow: start => annotate => capture
* normal flow: start => capture
ShareX also supports a ton of different other workflows. After capture it can automatically add the image to your clipboard, or open it in an external image editor, or upload it to imgur and add the link to your clipboard, etc etc.
(On Linux the closest thing I have found to ShareX is ksnip [2]. Takes a bit of configuring, for example I recommend disabling tabs, but overall it's good enough for me)
iirc that just shows a toolbar with the different screenshot modes. You still need to manually select a mode, which is not as fast and intuitive as ShareX which combines most of the modes into one
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. ShareX only requires you to memorize one keyboard shortcut, and then its a single click to either do a full screen capture, window capture, or region capture. For MacOS you either memorize multiple shortcuts, or you use one shortcut to show the toolbar, then you select a mode, and then you capture (well aside from full screen capture which is automatic). Overall it seems like MacOS requires either more memorization or more clicks.
Edit: here's a quick demo of ShareX for people who haven't used it [1]. You can see me enter capture mode (via keyboard shortcut), which starts in fullscreen capture mode, then I hover over the calculator to switch to window capture mode, then I move it away to switch back to fullscreen capture mode, then I click and drag to do a region capture and release to complete the capture. You can also see the annotation tools at top that can be used during capture.
That sounds like a lot of other third-party screen shot tools on Mac OS, too. The basic, built-in screen shot on Mac OS has a lot of features but it comes from a system-tool standpoint. It works efficiently for those with some experience, but it can be a little hard for new users to learn. The third-party tools add a more visual layer on top of that for beginners.
When I boot into Windows and want to snip a portion of the screen I am going into a menu and opening a dedicated UI program (snipping tool). Then I manually save it to the desktop again through menus. Then I can access the snip. It's insanity compared to what I do on macOS.
CMD+SHIFT+5 also gives you clear options to "tap to do X" like you say.
Annotation directly yes, that is nice. And I know some people dislike the "floating screenshot in corner" feature of macOS, but if you allow it to start you get instant annotation right after taking a screenshot without having to open the IMO clunky preview app.
There are also other 3rd party tools for annotation for macOS that can pipe together flows, probably as advanced to what you mention.
> Using ShareX on Windows is like night and day.
Because you are literally comparing a dedicated tool to a built in implementation (which I kind of feel you have not explored all that well lately).
Is there any trick to record a video of a given app window only (or that covers area of a window)? Making screenshot is easy with pressing `space`, is there an equivalent for videos?
Doesn't record a video, but I've been a happy user of LICEcap to make animated gifs of a portion of the screen that I share with co-workers (to github, slack, etc.)
I recommend against changing the format from png to jpg. The sample shows a picture of a dog, but most screenshots should be of applications (having a limited color palette) and must of the time the goal is readability (jpg compression drastically reduces text clarity relative to png)
It can encode the difference to the previous pixel either up or above (or some combination). In purely horizontal or vertical gradients that's just as efficient as encoding constant color (and in fact, the Wikipedia page shows an example). For gradients in other directions, it depends on how homogeneous the slope is (because it will zip the diff to the previous pixel, i.e. the slope).
Doesn't that example show that a 256-step gradient takes 256 bytes? A 256-step run of the same colour takes just a couple of bytes due to RLE, doesn't it? (Not an expert.)
I debated about adding "after the first row", but didn't (because it doesn't make sense for gradients in the other direction). Either way, both my and Wikipedia's point is that a simple gradient filling a 2D surface costs only a "1D amount" of bytes, which is going to beat JPEG (at "can still read text" levels of quality).
Also, I was surprised one common hack I used to see talked about a lot not dicussed given they delved into changes you can make on the CLI: you can change the default location (Eg to a "Screenshots" folder) instead of the default of cluttering the desktop
In terminal type "defaults write com.apple.screencapture location" where "location" is a path of your choosing.
(I'm fond of nesting a "screenshots" folder in the user directory pictures folder.)
If you need to reduce the size of a screenshot it's often better to keep it as a PNG and reduce the number of colors. 256 colors nearly always carries all the information needed without blurring the edges or the text. Often 128 or 64 is fine. Don't use dithering - it harms the compression ratio, so you may as well use a few more colors instead.
Often just applying lossless PNG optimisations using a tool like https://imageoptim.com/mac will sometimes save a large percentage, although it can take a minute or so for the tool to finish.
I felt $29 was a bit much considering greenshot and other free things on windows that do similar ... but I use it hundreds of times some days and it's overall great.
Huge +1 to CleanShot (and PixelSnap). Definitely worth the money considering I use CleanShot daily. Quick annotations, simple video capture and re-encoding. The integration with PixelSnap is really nice as my screenshots have consistent padding. A small thing, but it takes me zero effort and is aesthetically pleasing.
I couldn't find anything on their website, my workflow, which I hate is:
Screenshot section to file, click on preview before it disappears, markup on iPad with Apple Pencil, copy to clipboard, paste to Docs/Slack/GitHub, delete file.
I really wish I could eliminate the temporary files in this process.
Do you happen to know if Cleanshot can do iPad annotation?
I wonder what the cost benefit on that little popup window for preview is after the screenshot. Too often I find myself being annoyed because it went away before I was able to click on it and as a result I just take another screenshot to get the window to pop up again. Way less often do I find myself annoyed because it stuck around too long.
Worth noting however that just switching to Preview and Cmd-N will open it up with your screen shot from the clipboard, and then cmd-shift-a gets you annotation tools. So this is a pretty streamlined workflow already.
I use ⌘⇧4 followed by space to capture a single window quite often, as well. Did not know about the TouchBar shortcut, as I've never owned a Mac with that Bar.
Tip if you’re doing the ⌘⇧4+ space trick to capture a window: if you hold down command while selecting a window you can grab things like alerts that appear as part of the window.
Man, you guys are changing my life. LOL. I knew about cmd-shift-4 (and the ctrl version), but I never knew about hitting spacebar to make it do a window.
Gitlab and GitHub both let you upload videos (and probably more). I still use ffmpeg to convert .mov to .mp4 to get a better file size. But either run circles around the quality and size of .gif
They are shown inline but they don't play automatically. But they do let the reviewer pause and rewind to see something they've missed, rather than sit there and wait to hopefully catch what they missed.
Cmd + Shift + 5 will also give you access to some of options (as noted in the article)
Then let you adjust the selection area in relaxed way
I always make sure to enable "Remember Last Selection", which is great when you're taking repeated screenshots of the same area. Once you've created the selection area you'll get exact sizes every time.
Add in the control key in the shortcut above and the screenshot will go to the clipboard instead of a file. Useful for pasting a screenshot into something like Messages or Slack.
Also there's no need to hold down Option when clicking. You can however hit Esc to cancel the screenshot action.
after copying to clipboard, you can also paste it into an empty preview window by hitting ctrl-N (with preview in the foreground). you can paste additional clippings from the clipboard as impromptu layers that you can drag around on top of the first image.
in this way, folks (e.g., product managers) can quickly compose a mockup using components from a pre-existing UI without opening up photoshop/pixelmator/affinity.
Another option is when you press Command+Shift+5 select Options. From there select to Open in Preview. From then on any screenshot will open in preview automatically.
After hitting space to go to select window mode, click select the window and its shadow, option click select the window without its shadow. Not sure why you say the option key is not needed.
I just figured out that these generate really nice transparent borders, which they use to add shadows. They look great when you put them in, e.g., Notion docs.
I think Mac OS has the most inaccessible hidden hotkey shortcuts out of every OS I've used. Even essential functions like showing hidden files in a directory is uniquely done through an hidden shortcut in Mac OS.
Perhaps, but the aforementioned screenshot shortcut I learned just like OP because I wanted to take a screenshot, and it's muscle memory for me as well. I even thought to myself before I clicked on the article "I'm pretty sure they are going to have CMD + Shift + 4 or CMD + Shift + 5 as the focal point of the article". I would call it "inaccessible" in terms of natural discovery, sure. But it is definitely not "inaccessible" in terms of ease of use and memory when you do know about it. I had to google "how to screenshot on mac" once in my life and I've used the keyboard shortcuts on a near daily basis for more than half a decade.
Some of them are obscure but there's a big list of them somewhere in System Preferences and you can change them. You can also change keyboard shortcuts in your programs too. Definitely something I miss from Mac OS X.
Most of the time Mac shortcuts also come with a more discoverable approach. I’m not at my desktop atm, but isn’t there also the “grab” application for taking screenshots?
If all features had their menu or button visible, that would make the interface more complex.
Maybe they consider this as advanced features, that advanced users will find out anyway.
Your comment is somehow weird in this publication, because the article assumes (and many comments corroborate) that advanced users are not advanced enough to know all the hidden UI of the screenshot feature.
Or is it? I can’t even find it with the search box in the help menu.
FWIW, I didn’t know that shortcut before today, and I consider myself a well-versed Mac user since the intel switch
For showing hidden files and file extensions, there's a Terminal command you can run to permanently set it for every file. Of course, since it's only exposed through some command line utility, I forgot what it was and would have to search again.
cmd + shift + . (that's a dot / period / full stop with cmd and shift) is the built in shortcut in Finder to toggle hidden files. Easy to remember as hidden files start with a dot.
The dot might be easy to remember, but the cmd+shift bit isn't for me. Mac shortcuts can be cmd+shift, or ctrl+shift, or ctrl+cmd, or just cmd, or sometimes there's an opt in there as well.
After using a Macbook for work for 4 years, I still have no intuitive idea which modifier keys should be used when, it seems to be random.
“Usability nightmare” is objectively a bit of a stretch.
The example given isn’t really something most users need. Even when I did need to do that the answer was discovered and executed within 20 seconds of googling. This is the same for other things most people don’t need across all the prevalent OSes
Well I disagree, so I don’t think it’s objective. Another goodie is when installing an update, macOS only shows that you can cancel the update if you hover over the progress bar or where the cancel X would be. If you just look at the window, you think there’s no way to cancel and that you need to ride it out. You just have to happen to hover over the right element. There’s no reason for this. macOS is absolutely full of little things like this that are hidden in the OS. iOS does this as well. Going to the settings screen, you gotta pull down to see that there’s a search bar. Again no reason for that. Both macOS and iOS are very inconsistent and hide all sorts of settings, behaviors, etc. Another example is that I can’t even adjust my external monitor’s volume and brightness from the OS because Apple wants you to buy their monitors. And all that’s ignoring the portion of usability from things in the OS just not working or that break.
There is a really compelling reason on iOS: saving screen real estate. And the top-hidden search bar is convention now, just like the pull-to-refresh gesture. Discoverability is an issue though, I agree. But unnecessarily hidden? Disagree.
> essential functions like showing hidden files in a directory
How is that an essential function? My mom has never needed it in 20 years of using Macs. And when I want to know about hidden files, I pop open a terminal and ls -la.
Precisely. Just as the "Go" menu in the Finder doesn't contain the Library folder, because the user generally doesn't need it. As an advanced user, you can pop open a Terminal and `open Library`, or you use a shortcut: press Option while in the Go menu.
Seeing as you and I both know the shortcut, how is it inaccessible or hidden? Just because it’s not there cluttering up the visual interface doesn’t mean it’s hidden. For anyone who thinks they might want it, they can find it. For anyone else, they’ll never see it. Seems about right to me.
Be sure how would I even know this is a thing to Google unless I see tip lists like this?
If there was a MacOS shortcut list, grouped by category so that when I want to do something I can search if it is possible without installing a utility, that would be awesome.
Apple has only recently created the fancy screenshot utility. It used to only be 3-5 shortcuts for screenshots since I switched to Macs about 15 years ago.
Just hours ago complained to a friend about how arcane some things in macOS are. Short of just pressing random key combinations, there is no way to discover that it's possible to paste/type a path into the standard file selection dialog.
(It's cmd-shift-g to get the text entry to appear, or simply forward slash to get it to appear with the slash already entered. Also, it says "Go to Folder", but if you direct it to a file, it will navigate to the folder the file is in and also select the file)
As a lifetime Windows user who started using Macs for the day job about a decade ago, it was clear that Windows came from a keyboard-oriented background, and Macs come from a legacy of focusing on doing as much with a mouse as possible.
I have a lot of internal thoughts about why I like what I grew up with (particularly with respect to discoverable keyboard shortcuts), but it's just not worth the mental energy of exploring that with internet strangers. The bottom line for me is that a decade on, I still split it between a Macbook for work, Windows desktop for home/creative/gaming, and if I could reasonably work without MacOS I would, but I can't.
Apparently it hides the shadows when you screenshot an individual window. Neat trick, although I think I'm going to apply the trick from the article, since I don't think I ever actually want the shadows.
You know, I'm looking at all the tips and suggestions here, and my thoughts keep going back to SnagIt from TechSmith -- these problems seem to all just go away with SnagIt.
Sure, it's cross platform, but I don't care about that. It works better for me on macOS than the native facilities, and provides much better post-screenshot editing.
If I want to do video capture, the industry gold standard here is Camtasia, also from TechSmith.
I know the standard provided functionality, and I just don't want to be bothered.
Nice one. I found that it only takes a separate window on the mac screen, but when I want to do it on additional display, it does not allow me to select a window - it highlights all the screen as a window.
Is entering the name in advance as you're requesting really any less cumbersome than renaming a generically named file after the fact?
In your request, you must provide a file name every time. In the current method, you can just take the snap and not waste time with the filename unless you really just need/want to do it for reasons.
I didn't say in advance. After the fact is likely best, but in a seamless flow that doesn't require using Finder, the terminal, or any other tool. Indeed Gnome solves after the fact, allowing you to just accept the default generated filename, or specify your own, with zero friction.
As others in the thread mention, once you've taken the screenshot, it helpfully dumps you in "the editor" (is this Preview.app? I don't know because it doesn't have a title bar..). In the editor, I am give then option to do a bunch of things, but no option to rename the screenshot. This is disappointing. Hence I was hoping somebody here could fill me in on the trick that will make me happy..
MacOS Big Sur out of the box does not show a title bar for the after-screenshot editor. How do I configure it to show a title bar so I can use your tip?
Want a quick measurement in px for something on your screen? CMD + SHIFT + 4 for the crosshairs, drag from origin to destination, observe the measurement in px. Press ESC to not capture anything.
(Only works for horizontal or vertical measurements, unless you're good at doing pythagorean theorem in your head)
Random, related wish: I've always wanted a screenshot utility that captured windows/screens as PDFs (or SVGs), with each element as separate objects at their highest-available resolutions. For example, icons would be 512×512px objects. Vector representations would be created for controls like windows, menus, and buttons.
If you're in the cmd-shift-4 screenshot snipping mode and you've already started drawing your rectangle, you can press+hold space and drag around to keep your rectangle the same size and move it around.
One for people like me who love to get the padding just right: Hold spacebar while dragging a screenshot area to reposition the upper-left corner of the drag area.
command-shift-4 allows you to drag-select a rectangle. While dragging you can hold down spacebar to switch to moving the selection instead of resizing it. neat feature!
Since we're all sharing here, another tool I often use is Paparazzi – you give it a URL and it creates a screenshot of the site (including scrolling as needed). A nice way to keep a visual snapshot of a site for future reference. Its on the App Store or at https://derailer.org/paparazzi/
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadThe new GNONE screenshot tool is similar because it capurures everything as soon as you hit Print Screen, but it still forces you to decide what to save immediately. It would be nice if has an option to save everything so you can pick out what you want in post.
I also want something like this for audio. Record every audio stream on my machine as different tracks. Then I can select which ones I want later.
https://textsniper.app/
[1]: https://github.com/schappim/macOCR
After `brew install pngpaste tesseract` (the latter is a dependency of the great OCRmyPDF tool btw), you can set `alias ocr="pngpaste - | tesseract -c debug_file=/dev/null stdin stdout | pbcopy; pbpaste"`.
I like having this alias better than macOCR because the workflow feels more ergonomic: You first cmd + shift + 4 to select text and then type `ocr` with the result being printed to stdout and being saved in your clipboard. With macOCR I have to go to the terminal first to initiate the process, then go back to what I want to screenshot etc.
eg https://github.com/Artikash/Textractor
[1]: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.tenderowl.frog
[2]: https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract
I must confess, I was pretty sure I’d learn nothing by clicking in. I was pleasantly surprised, thanks!
This is not necessarily supported everywhere though...
I also believe it should be the copy that strips the style.
FWIW, in my many decades of using computers, I've never once wanted to paste with styles as whatever app is getting pasted into inevitably (without exception, like 100% of the time) "guesses" the formatting incorrectly.
The default is crazy.
And no "read the manual" isn't it. From certain scale the manual should be out of the window and UI should accomodate for people to learn while using it.
(the interface of which can also be reached via Cmd-Shift-5, allowing video recording and much more)
Holding CTRL is just a... well... "shortcut" for that.
Or more likely, new users search for "screenshot" in Spotlight the first few times, and if they do this enough maybe Google "mac screenshot shortcuts" (which leads them to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201361).
Do you want constant buttons on screen at all times for every possible OS-level functionality?
I'm that original poster. The comment I responded to was clearly referring to holding "ctrl" in order to save to clipboard, not referring to the screenshot ability itself (which as others have mentioned, is not hidden behind a keyboard shortcut, but is an app in Applications/Utilities)
You cannot realistically make every single cmd+<letter> mnemonic. They do the best they can inside the circumstances, and then having chosen a base key, they say "ok. what do we bind to the alternates via option/shift" so it makes contextual sense.
I regard that as seeking intuitive behaviour. You are invited to (subconsciously) consider CMD+key as the base to learn, and then CMD+OPTION or CMD+SHIFT variants as the obvious alternates.
The key here, is ownership of the UI/UX: they police this. Much though Microsoft tries, it doesn't police this well enough across the independent app vendors outside of a tiny core of functions. Between Gnome and KDE, there is no policing.
I said emacs, because the basics of modifying lines of text in most things now, are emacs line modifiers by inheritance: because the X10-> X11 -> XOrg uplift means that the web omnibar and text boxes are inherently derived from X, the keystrokes to edit text are inherited from MIT X which inherited from MIT emacs.
As a VI user I just had to come to terms with this: Sure, you CAN force override them to VI friendly form, nobody does:
we're all emacs keystroke users in this narrow sense. Emacs won.
is it in the form of non interactive animation? Yikes. If not, there is no problem with 27h, you just don't be ridiculous to do it all at once, instead of contextually.
No, you don't. You can either search in Spotlight or go to Apps->Utilities, and it is there, along with activity monitor(aka task manager)/terminal/etc.
Discoverability on macos is atrocious, and even after few years on it I sometimes struggle with basic things
Another great thing is they’re generally quite consistent across apps, so memorizing one is usually applicable system wide. And another great thing is that if you don’t like the defaults (or have a menu item you wish had a shortcut in the first place), they’re almost always configurable.
I think macos does this better than pretty much any other desktop OS. Granted the bar isn't very high.
Why not?
> The vast majority of users can be productive on macos without ever using a single keyboard shortcut.
If you're not using keyboard shortcuts you definitely do not have flow. Again, why should the standard be so minimal ('can eventually complete a task') and not involve efficiency, fluidity, joy, mastery, etc.?
It's not hard to do better when you leverage searches that simultaneously expose functionality and alternative ways to invoke it (e.g., keybinds, menu paths, app names, etc.). The example that blew my mind is Emacs with a nice fuzzy filtering search like you get pre-configured with Spacemacs or Doom, but macOS also has two great examples built in: Spotlight and the global app menu search.
I'd be interested to know what portion of users use copy/paste.
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Downloads && killall SystemUIServer
Ahem, cough ... Mr Testa, its 4, not 5 for full-app screenshots. ;-)
It’s so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker in chat or a task tool.
I recently discovered that with my trusty Logitech G203 I can write cursive on my images with about the same legibility as I can on a whiteboard. Very pleasing.
You can make it even faster by cutting out the Preview step. When the thumbnail of the screenshot appears in the lower-right corner of the screen, click it, and then you can use Markup to annotate the image right there, and then share it as needed.
Since I don't have your Logitech, I don't know if this method will support your hand-writing step. But it's worth a try, and is still useful for drawing circles and arrows and things on screenshots before firing them off to a coworker.
My go to workaround is to screenshot, annotate, screenshot the annotation tool into clipboard and paste that. (I know)
1. If the program I'm trying to share with is available in the Share control, I use that.
2. Since I already have a Screenshots folder in my dock that displays as a fan, and is sorted by most recently added, I click "done" on the annotated screenshot, then I can click on that folder in the dock, and it's right there, ready to be dragged into any other application.
I know pretty much every other combination of screenshot shortcut mentioned here, but this workflow has irked me ever since they added the annotation tools. I can work with this, thanks!
What's this app called? I'm embarrassed to admit I can't tell, even after trawling activity monitor.
* left click to capture full screen
* hover over a window and left click to capture a specific window
* click and drag to capture a region
* right click to cancel
There's also annotation and drawing tools directly in the screenshot mode. Imo this is way better than how macOS opens the editor afterwards. Because for the times you don't need to annotate, you still have to close the preview window. In other words:
MacOS
* annotation flow: start => capture => annotate
* normal flow: start => capture => close preview
ShareX
* annotation flow: start => annotate => capture
* normal flow: start => capture
ShareX also supports a ton of different other workflows. After capture it can automatically add the image to your clipboard, or open it in an external image editor, or upload it to imgur and add the link to your clipboard, etc etc.
(On Linux the closest thing I have found to ShareX is ksnip [2]. Takes a bit of configuring, for example I recommend disabling tabs, but overall it's good enough for me)
[1]: https://getsharex.com/
[2]: https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip
You don't need to memorize any shortcuts on macOS to take a screenshot. Just open up "Screenshot.app". It's in /Applications/Utilities/
That's a single entry point to all of the screenshot features as well.
Edit: here's a quick demo of ShareX for people who haven't used it [1]. You can see me enter capture mode (via keyboard shortcut), which starts in fullscreen capture mode, then I hover over the calculator to switch to window capture mode, then I move it away to switch back to fullscreen capture mode, then I click and drag to do a region capture and release to complete the capture. You can also see the annotation tools at top that can be used during capture.
[1]: https://giant.gfycat.com/WellwornSizzlingIrukandjijellyfish....
CMD+SHIFT+5 also gives you clear options to "tap to do X" like you say.
Annotation directly yes, that is nice. And I know some people dislike the "floating screenshot in corner" feature of macOS, but if you allow it to start you get instant annotation right after taking a screenshot without having to open the IMO clunky preview app.
There are also other 3rd party tools for annotation for macOS that can pipe together flows, probably as advanced to what you mention.
> Using ShareX on Windows is like night and day.
Because you are literally comparing a dedicated tool to a built in implementation (which I kind of feel you have not explored all that well lately).
Quicktime Player does this.
New Screen Recording → Capture Selected Window
With translucency and soft gradients everywhere I’m not sure how true that is anymore.
It can encode the difference to the previous pixel either up or above (or some combination). In purely horizontal or vertical gradients that's just as efficient as encoding constant color (and in fact, the Wikipedia page shows an example). For gradients in other directions, it depends on how homogeneous the slope is (because it will zip the diff to the previous pixel, i.e. the slope).
Also, I was surprised one common hack I used to see talked about a lot not dicussed given they delved into changes you can make on the CLI: you can change the default location (Eg to a "Screenshots" folder) instead of the default of cluttering the desktop
In terminal type "defaults write com.apple.screencapture location" where "location" is a path of your choosing.
(I'm fond of nesting a "screenshots" folder in the user directory pictures folder.)
Often just applying lossless PNG optimisations using a tool like https://imageoptim.com/mac will sometimes save a large percentage, although it can take a minute or so for the tool to finish.
1) Monosnap (freemium) - https://monosnap.com
2) Cleanshot ($29) - https://cleanshot.com
Both tools also include large amount of extra functionality for taking screenshots and recordings.
It’s truly excellent and feels like a natural extension of the built-in functionality.
Screenshot section to file, click on preview before it disappears, markup on iPad with Apple Pencil, copy to clipboard, paste to Docs/Slack/GitHub, delete file.
I really wish I could eliminate the temporary files in this process.
Do you happen to know if Cleanshot can do iPad annotation?
https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/
⌘⇧3: Full-screen screenshot
⌘⇧4: Select a screen region to screenshot
⌘⇧6: "Screenshot" of your TouchBar.
The last one is useful to me because I use the TouchBar as a tiny screen to output status and debugging information.
It creates a touchbar as a movable floating window on your desktop.
- First, type command + shift + 4 (the mouse pointer turns into crosshair).
- Then type the space bar (the crosshair turns into a camera icon).
- Hover the mouse pointer (a camera icon now), to highlight the chosen window.
- Finally, hold the option key and click.
This sounds like a lot of steps but it becomes muscle memory pretty quickly.
the thing I love about gifs is that they play automatically so as soon as you open the issue you are seeing the animation of what the problem is.
I feel like the screengrab ui also has it too
Then let you adjust the selection area in relaxed way
I always make sure to enable "Remember Last Selection", which is great when you're taking repeated screenshots of the same area. Once you've created the selection area you'll get exact sizes every time.
bruh, what, god tier shortcut here
Also there's no need to hold down Option when clicking. You can however hit Esc to cancel the screenshot action.
Holding option seems to remove the gradient shadow of the application window in the screenshot. Not needed, but it’s better in my opinion.
`defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow true`
Have you ever run that? Presumably changing to false gets you the shadow again.
Combination of CTRL+OPTION works too.
in this way, folks (e.g., product managers) can quickly compose a mockup using components from a pre-existing UI without opening up photoshop/pixelmator/affinity.
https://i.postimg.cc/zX5f4fqN/1.png
Makes it easier to find visually.
Edit: Of course I was 1 google search away from the answer: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-icons-for-fi...
Of course, this can only cover Apple's own software and 3rd party software which adheres to Apple conventions.
So sad...
I'm fairly certain, it's in the menu bar too
For showing hidden files and file extensions, there's a Terminal command you can run to permanently set it for every file. Of course, since it's only exposed through some command line utility, I forgot what it was and would have to search again.
After using a Macbook for work for 4 years, I still have no intuitive idea which modifier keys should be used when, it seems to be random.
The example given isn’t really something most users need. Even when I did need to do that the answer was discovered and executed within 20 seconds of googling. This is the same for other things most people don’t need across all the prevalent OSes
As for the monitor, just install Monitor Control: https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl
How is that an essential function? My mom has never needed it in 20 years of using Macs. And when I want to know about hidden files, I pop open a terminal and ls -la.
It should be difficult to see hidden files. And it is!
I know the devil is in the details, I'm just poking fun at the thing, but you gotta admit it's kind of funny.
If there was a MacOS shortcut list, grouped by category so that when I want to do something I can search if it is possible without installing a utility, that would be awesome.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236
Screenshot shortcuts and functions are here.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/take-a-screenshot-o...
Secondly, it doesn't have the details on capturing without a shadow in an easy to read format.
"Apple's UI is not discoverable or even obvious."
"Just use Apple's biggest competitor to find them!"
(It's cmd-shift-g to get the text entry to appear, or simply forward slash to get it to appear with the slash already entered. Also, it says "Go to Folder", but if you direct it to a file, it will navigate to the folder the file is in and also select the file)
I have a lot of internal thoughts about why I like what I grew up with (particularly with respect to discoverable keyboard shortcuts), but it's just not worth the mental energy of exploring that with internet strangers. The bottom line for me is that a decade on, I still split it between a Macbook for work, Windows desktop for home/creative/gaming, and if I could reasonably work without MacOS I would, but I can't.
https://userbase.kde.org/images.userbase/4/4c/Spectacledefau...
The default kde screenshot app just has simple dropdown menus for all that. Is command+$, space, option+click really better than PrtScr, click?
It is the key with PrtScr written on it. Also, it is impressive by what a wide margin you missed the point.
Sure, it's cross platform, but I don't care about that. It works better for me on macOS than the native facilities, and provides much better post-screenshot editing.
If I want to do video capture, the industry gold standard here is Camtasia, also from TechSmith.
I know the standard provided functionality, and I just don't want to be bothered.
In your request, you must provide a file name every time. In the current method, you can just take the snap and not waste time with the filename unless you really just need/want to do it for reasons.
As others in the thread mention, once you've taken the screenshot, it helpfully dumps you in "the editor" (is this Preview.app? I don't know because it doesn't have a title bar..). In the editor, I am give then option to do a bunch of things, but no option to rename the screenshot. This is disappointing. Hence I was hoping somebody here could fill me in on the trick that will make me happy..
(my complaint scoped to Big Sur btw)
(Only works for horizontal or vertical measurements, unless you're good at doing pythagorean theorem in your head)