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Who Needs A Print Screen Key?

Looking at the typical that Apple keyboard one would assume that there is no print screen function in OS X. Well, I got some news and it might be a shocker. OS X has more robust print screen functionality than Windows XP.

Just use any of the following commands to place a shiny new PDF on your desktop.

CMD + Shift + 3
This will take a screenshot of your entire screen.

CMD + Shift + 4
This will bring up a selection tool so you can make a rectangular screenshot of a certain area.

CMD + Shift + 4 + Space Bar
This will turn your cursor into a tiny camera. Use this camera to take a picture of the Dock, a menu, or a window and it will crop the background automatically for the resulting image.

Note: If you hold down the Control key during and of the above commands the image gets copied to your clipboard, ready to paste, rather than creating a PDF on your desktop.

13 Comments

bah! this doesn’t work

this does not work to copy from a parallels window and then paste to outlook within parallels. the mac copy function only copies to make apps.

I hate Mac screen printing - I don’t want to find the generic picture on my desktop, open it, print it, then delete it.

I use Printkey 2000 on Windows machines, which has the option of allowing me to just print what I captured.

I downloaded and tried Jing, and found that it doesn’t have a Print tab. I just want to print what I select without the hassle of creating a file I need to process and clean up.

Thanks for these excellent tips. The third one was exactly what I needed, minus the PDFs it can generate.

Works perfect when pasting into NeoOffice!

Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com

I love it, this is just what I’ve been looking for. I’m new to macs, I’ve only had my Macbook for about a year and this provided an elegant and very Mac-like solution to one of my very few complaints. Thank you!

Um… Surely it pops a PNG on your desktop, not a PDF

Thanks! This works really well! I am new to the Mac OS and I was afraid there wasn’t a Print Screen until I read this post. I am not sure I like how it saves it to the desktop vs to memory but still, i like being able to save a selection.

Wow thats pretty cool!

Andy B- no it does drop a PDF - Apple/Adobe seem to work together a fair bit.

Extremely handy reference!

[...] Some apple keyboard users may have noticed the lack of a “Print Screen” key..  Never fear, there is a print screen function in OS X, and it’s far superior to the Windows version! (this tip comes from This Great Source) [...]

works perfect! thanks!

this is great! works like a charm… is automatically saved on your desktop, you can open it with Preview and Save As: Jpeg or many other formats.
this was very helpful, thank you all!

wtf CMD + Shift + 3 !? Couldnt they just make it one key so people who dont printscreen every single day can remember it !?

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