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Here is the list of MAC Print Screen Tricks/ Shortcuts that would allow you to use Print Screen in MAC.

Overview

You just broke the highest score in your favorite game and want to keep a screenshot of it to share it with your friends. You have done it in a PC, but you using a MAC now. How do you do it?

Unlike Windows PC, MAC doesn’t have a dedicated Print Screen key on its keyboard which makes it hard for new MAC users to perform screen capture. This article comprehensively details every possible free method to use the Print Screen Feature in MAC. These methods include using keyboard shortcuts and bundled Apple utilities.

But before we go any further here is what a MAC keyboard looks like

We would need to be familiar with 3 keys

Apple or the Command Key

Ctrl Key &

Shift Key

I have highlighted them for your convenience.

Copy / Capture Entire Desktop

If you want to take the screen shot of your entire desktop press and hold Apple Key+ Shift + 3 and release simultaneously.  The screen shot will be automatically saved to your desktop in either .png or .pdf format.

If you want to copy the screen shot to clipboard to paste in any other program Press and hold Ctrl+Apple Key+ Shift + 3. You can now paste and edit this image in the program of your choice

Copy/ Capture a Portion of your desktop

To take the screen shot of a selected area press and hold Apple Key+ Shift + 4. Release keys to see a cross haired cursor. Drag your mouse and select the portion of the screen that you want to capture. You would see the screenshot on your desktop.

To copy this screen shot to the clipboard just press and hold Ctrl+Apple Key+ Shift +4. Release the keys and follow the above procedure.

Copy / Capture an Application Window

To take the screen shot of an application press and hold Apple Key+ Shift + 4. Release keys to see a cross haired cursor. Now press the space bar once. The cursor should change to Camera icon. Now click on the application window.

The screen shot should appear on your desktop.

To copy the screen shot of image to clipboard, press and hold Ctrl + Apple Key+ Shift + 4 and repeat the above procedure.

Using Grab to take Screenshots

Mac OS X also ships with the Grab utility, located in the Applications -> Utilities folder. To use Grab, double-click on its icon and choose the type of image you want to capture.

Grab supports three modes of screen capture:

Selection: Select the region you want to capture using the mouse

Screen: Lets you capture the entire screen

Timed Screen: Lets you capture the entire screen after a specific time interval

The fourth mode, Window capture, is not functional in Jaguar.

Unlike the built-in screen capture utility, Grab allows mouse pointers to be captured. You can capture actions like clicking on a menu item by using the Timed Screen mode, as shown image below.

The selection grab will also display the size of the image you are capturing at the bottom right corner of the selection region. This is useful if you need to capture images of an exact size. One gripe I have, though, is over Grab’s inability to reposition the selection region.

Unlike the built-in screen capture utility in Mac OS X Jaguar, Grab saves the images in .tiff format.

One cool feature in Grab is the option to include different mouse pointers (or simply hide the mouse pointer) in the screen capture. To activate this feature, click on Grab -> Preferences. A window containing all of the different mouse pointers will be shown

So there you have it – Quite a few tricks to use Print Screen in MAC. If you can’t remember all these tricks, make sure you bookmark our site for future reference.