How to Screenshot on Mac
Take a screenshot on a Mac with Cmd+Shift+3, 4, or 5, copy it straight to the clipboard, and choose where your screenshots save.
If you have ever tried to take a screenshot on a Mac by pressing Print Screen and had nothing happen, welcome to the club. Macs do not have a Print Screen key. They have a set of keyboard shortcuts instead, and nothing on the keys tells you what they are.
With them you can capture the full screen, a selected region, a specific window, or even set a timer for delayed captures. You can save to a file, copy to clipboard, or both. The same shortcut family also opens a built-in screen recorder.
You will come away knowing the shortcut for each kind of capture and where the files end up. We checked every shortcut here against Apple's documentation for macOS Tahoe 26 and macOS 27 in September 2026.
Capture the full screen with Cmd+Shift+3
Cmd+Shift+3 captures your entire screen and saves it as a PNG file on your desktop. If you have multiple monitors, each monitor becomes its own separate file. You will see a small thumbnail appear in the corner of your screen. Click it to open a quick markup editor where you can crop, annotate, add text, draw, or share straight from the preview. If you hold the pointer over the thumbnail, Apple says it stays onscreen until you act on it or move the pointer away. Ignore it and the file saves to your desktop on its own after a moment, named with the date and time it was taken. This method captures absolutely everything visible on that display, including the menu bar, Dock, and desktop wallpaper.
Capture a selected area with Cmd+Shift+4
Cmd+Shift+4 is the one worth building muscle memory for. Press the shortcut and your cursor turns into a precise crosshair with pixel coordinates displayed beside it. Click and drag to select exactly the area you want to capture. The pixel dimensions of your selection appear next to the crosshair as you drag, which is helpful for capturing specific sizes. Release the mouse button to take the screenshot. It saves to your desktop as a PNG. If you start dragging and change your mind, press Escape to cancel without capturing anything.
Good to know: After pressing Cmd+Shift+4, press the Spacebar to switch to window capture mode. Your cursor becomes a camera icon. Hover over any window and click to capture just that window with a nice drop shadow. If you would rather not have the shadow, Apple's instruction is to press and hold Option while you click. This works on any window, including individual dialog boxes, menus, and even the Dock.
Use the screenshot toolbar with Cmd+Shift+5
Cmd+Shift+5 opens a floating toolbar at the bottom of the screen, with every capture and recording option in one place. From left to right the toolbar runs capture modes first, then recording modes. Capture Entire Screen takes a full screen shot. Capture Selected Window lets you click any window. Capture Selected Portion lets you drag a rectangle. Then Record Entire Screen and Record Selected Portion handle video. On macOS Tahoe 26 and later Apple adds a third recording option, Record Selected Window, so count six buttons rather than five on a current Mac. Below these icons is a dropdown labeled "Options". It changes the save location, sets a countdown timer, chooses whether the mouse pointer appears in the capture, turns the floating thumbnail on or off, remembers your last selection area, and on supported Macs running macOS Tahoe 26 or later sets the Capture Format to HDR or SDR. Apple also documents recording from QuickTime Player, where File then New Screen Recording, or Control-Command-N, does the same job.
Copy to clipboard instead of saving a file
Any screenshot shortcut can be modified to copy to your clipboard instead of saving a file. Just hold the Control key in addition to the normal shortcut. Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+3 captures the full screen to clipboard. Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4 lets you select an area and copies it to clipboard. From there, paste it directly into Messages, Mail, Slack, Google Docs, or any application that accepts images with Cmd+V. No file is saved to your desktop. Use it to drop a screenshot into a conversation without leaving a file to clean up later.
Capture menus, tooltips, and the Touch Bar
Menus and tooltips disappear when you try to interact with them, which makes them tricky to capture. The solution is the window capture mode. Open the menu you want to screenshot, then press Cmd+Shift+4 followed by Spacebar. The menu counts as a "window" and you can click it to capture it standalone. For timed captures of hover states, use Cmd+Shift+5, set a 5-second timer in Options, click Capture, then position your mouse over the element before the timer expires. On Macs with a Touch Bar, Cmd+Shift+6 has traditionally captured it. Be aware that in macOS 27 with Apple's Siri AI (Beta) turned on, Apple assigns Command-Shift-6 to asking Siri about a portion of the screen.
Change where screenshots are saved
By default, screenshots save to your desktop, which gets cluttered quickly. To change this, press Cmd+Shift+5 to open the toolbar, click "Options," and select a different location from the "Save to" list. You can choose Desktop, Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, Preview, or a custom folder. Create a dedicated Screenshots folder in your Documents and select that. Your desktop stays clean and all screenshots are organized in one place.
Learn Cmd+Shift+4 first, because selecting an area covers the everyday case. Then set a Screenshots folder (step 6) so new captures stop piling up on your desktop. If a shortcut does nothing, the FAQs below show how to turn it back on. If you also use a Windows PC, our guide on how to screenshot on Windows covers the shortcuts there.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
The desktop. Every screenshot creates a new PNG file on your desktop named with the date and time. If you use the Cmd+Shift+5 toolbar, you can change the save location to any folder, clipboard, or directly into an application. The clipboard option (using the Ctrl modifier) saves nothing to disk.
Yes. On supported Macs running macOS Tahoe 26 or later, press Cmd+Shift+5, click Options, and set Capture Format to HDR, which saves screenshots as HEIF instead of PNG. For JPG, PDF, TIFF, or GIF, use Terminal. Open Terminal and run defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg, swapping jpg for pdf, tiff, or gif if you prefer. Press Enter, then run killall SystemUIServer so the change takes effect immediately. This changes all future screenshots to your chosen format. Keep PNG for most uses because it is lossless and supports transparency.
Check that they are still turned on. Choose Apple menu, then System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, then click Keyboard Shortcuts. Find the screenshot shortcuts in the list and make sure they are on and still set to the keys in this guide. Restore Defaults puts them back as they shipped, but it resets every keyboard shortcut on the Mac, not only the screenshot ones. If that is fine, click Restore Defaults in the bottom-left corner.
Yes. Drag the thumbnail that appears in the corner of the screen after a capture and drop it into an open document, an email, or a folder in Finder, instead of waiting for it to save to your desktop. To send it to the clipboard instead, Control-click the thumbnail and choose Save to Clipboard.
Press Cmd+Shift+5 and pick a recording mode by name rather than by position, since the number of buttons changes with the macOS version. Choose Record Entire Screen or Record Selected Portion, or Record Selected Window on macOS Tahoe 26 and later. Click Record. A small Stop button appears in the menu bar while recording. Click it, or press Command-Control-Esc, to stop. The recording saves to the same location as your screenshots, as a .mov file named "Screen Recording" followed by the date and time.
Screenshot Mastery
How to Screenshot on Mac
← you’re hereHow to Screenshot on Windows
How to Screenshot on Chromebook
How to Screen Record on iPhone