Taking a Screen Capture on Mac or Windows

Owned by Liz Christopher
Nov 21, 2022
1 min read

Mac Operating System

To take a screenshot of a selected portion of the screen: 

  1. On the keyboard press the keys Command (⌘) + Shift + 4 simultaneously

  2. A crosshair cursor will appear on the screen instead of a mouse pointer

  3. Move the crosshair to where you want to start the screen shot and drag it to include the entire desired image

  4. Release the mouse or trackpad button to capture the area within the crosshair selection

  5. The screenshot will be saved as a .png file on the desktop

To take a screenshot of the entire screen: 

  1. On the keyboard press the keys Command (⌘) + Shift + 3 simultaneously

  2. The screenshot will be saved as a .png file on the desktop

To take a screenshot of a window: 

  1. On the keyboard press Command (⌘) + Shift + 4 simultaneously 

  2. A crosshair cursor will appear on the screen instead of a mouse pointer

  3. Press the spacebar on the keyboard

  4. The pointer changes to a camera

  5. Move the camera over a window to highlight it

  6. Click the mouse or trackpad to take screenshot

  7. The screenshot will be saved as a .png file on the desktop

Windows Operating System

To take a screenshot of a selected portion of the screen: 

  1. On the keyboard press Windows + Shift + S simultaneously

  2. A grayed out overlay will appear on the screen

  3. Select capture region and release the mouse

  4. The selected area will be coped to the clipboard

  5. Paste the image into any editor or input that accepts the image

  6. Save the screen shot in the desired editor