What’s termed “Print Screen” in Windows devices is known as screenshots or screen captures in Mac OS X ones. You may have observed that there’s no “Print Screen” button on your Mac keyboard; this style is adopted in order to simplify the keyboard and also due to the fact that it isn’t all that necessary.
On the Mac, rather than pressing a “Print Screen” button, you will tap one of numerous keyboard combination shortcuts for performing a particular action, based on the specific screen capture action you need taken. This step not only simpler but also much more robust because there are eventually 6 unique options for performing variations of the screen print.
Printing Screen on the Mac
Here are 2 simple ways to carry out this operation on your Mac device:
Steps to Print Screen to a File on Your Mac Desktop
The primary option for taking a screenshot of a desktop or window in Mac OS X takes a full image capture of your desktop, together with every open window and running programs and puts it in a unique file on your Mac desktop. Every keyboard shortcut will make use of the concurrent hitting of the Command as well as Shift keys as the primary steps for execution, along with a couple of or another key:
- Command plus Shift plus 3: This combination takes a screenshot of the whole screen, or screens for multiple monitors, and then save it as a file to your Mac desktop
- Command plus Shift plus 4: This brings up a selection box for specifying an area to capture a screenshot of, and save it as a file to your Mac desktop
- Command plus Shift plus 4, followed by Spacebar, then click a window: This combination takes a screenshot of only your window and saves it as a file to the Mac desktop
Due to that fact that this method effectively “prints” the screen to your desktop as a distinct file that contains the screen capture, it obviates the need of having to take the unnecessary step of pasting the screenshot into another app and manually save it. If you prefer not to save the file to your Mac desktop, you can copy it to the clipboard instead, which you can paste elsewhere, the same way it is done in Windows devices.
Steps to Print Screen to the Clipboard on Your Mac
The functionality of saving the captured image to the clipboard directly shares many similarities with the Print Screen option in Windows systems. If you intend doing the same thing (Print Screen) on your Mac, so you can save this image in your clipboard and paste it into a separate document or app, these are the required commands you would have to press instead:
- Command plus Control plus Shift plus 3: This key combination will capture a screenshot of your full screen and directly save it to the clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere
- Command plus Control plus Shift plus 4, then select an area: This combination takes a screenshot of any selection you made by making use of the rectangular drawing box, and then stores it to the clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere
- Command plus Control plus Shift plus 4, followed by Space, then click a window: You will take this step to capture a screenshot of a window the way it is specified by your hovering snapshot cursor, and then stores the screen capture to the clipboard to be pasted elsewhere
This article was written for newbies in the Mac world, especially those users who are migrating over from the Windows platform. Armed with the tips provided in this write-up, you can print screen on your Mac quickly, without stress.