Screen Capture On Mac Using Windows Keyboard

  1. Screen Capture On Windows Using Mac Keyboard
  2. Show Keyboard On Screen Mac
Screen capture on mac using windows keyboard shortcut

In Windows we can take the screenshot of the current page/window using the Print Screen button. Where as in mac using the windows keyboard it can be performed by using the following key combination Command/Windows+Shift+3. 1 If you want to use screen capture on Mac for a window, then you should press Command + Shift + 4 keys at once. As the crosshairs appear on the screen, press the Space key and position the cursor over. To capture a portion of the screen, hold SHIFT-COMMAND-4. A crosshair will appear, which you can drag to select the area of screen you want to capture. If you want to move the entire selection. Jul 23, 2020 Go to applications on your Mac and select Utility. Under utility, click on Grab. Under the main menu of Grab, click on the Tab, Capture and then selection. Now choose the area of which you want to take a screenshot.

© AP It's easy to take screenshots on a Mac. AP
  • There are four ways to take a screenshot on a Mac, and all of them can be done with easy keyboard shortcuts.
  • If you press Shift + Command + 5 on your Mac's keyboard, you'll open the screenshot menu, which lets you take screenshots and videos, as well as customize your settings.
  • Pressing Shift + Command + 4 will let you take a quick screenshot anywhere on your screen, while Shift + Command + 3 will capture the entire screen at once.
  • If you have a MacBook with a Touch Bar, you can use Shift + Command + 6 to take a screenshot of the Touch Bar.
  • Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.
Using

If you see something great online, it's only natural that you'll want to share it with others. Obviously you could send a link, but what if you only want to point out a specific section or image?

This is where screenshots come in. You can take high quality screenshots on any Mac computer, and then edit or share them however you like. They'll automatically be titled 'Screen Shot,' followed by the date and time you took them.

If you've bought or updated your Mac since 2018, you even have access to the advanced screenshot menu, which will let you take videos of your screen too.

Best of all, taking screenshots on a Mac only takes a single keyboard shortcut. Which shortcut you use, though, depends on how you want to take the picture.

Here's four ways to take screenshots on a Mac.

How to screenshot on a Mac

Every method for screenshotting on a Mac uses the Shift, Command, and number keys. In short:

  • Shift + Command + 3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen.
  • Shift + Command + 4 lets you highlight a specific part of the screen to capture.
  • Shift + Command + 5 opens the screenshot menu, which lets you do both of the above, as well as record videos and edit your screenshot options.
  • Shift + Command + 6 takes a screenshot of the Touch Bar, if your Mac has one.
© Apple; skitching by William Antonelli/Business Insider Taking a screenshot only uses three fingers. Apple; skitching by William Antonelli/Business Insider

We'll go over all of them below, starting with the most widely applicable method: the screenshot menu.

Taking a screenshot with the screenshot menu

The screenshot menu was introduced in MacOS Mojave, the big 2018 update — if you've bought or updated your Mac since then, there's a very good chance you have it.

To open this menu, press Shift + Command + 5. A small bar will appear at the bottom of the screen.

The three icons on the left will let you take a screenshot of the entire screen, a specific window, or a highlighted section, respectively. The next two icons to the right will let you record a video of the entire screen, or just a highlighted section.

The 'Capture' button on the far right will take the screenshot, or begin recording the video.

© William Antonelli/Business Insider The screenshot menu will offer you a variety of options. William Antonelli/Business Insider

There's also a menu labeled 'Options.' This menu lets you choose where to save the screenshot or video, how much time you want between pressing 'Capture' and the screenshot or video being taken, and more.

© William Antonelli/Business Insider The options menu will let you customize how your screenshots are taken. William Antonelli/Business Insider

Of note in this menu is the 'Show Floating Thumbnail' option, which is turned on by default. When this is enabled, after you take a screenshot, a tiny thumbnail of it will appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The screenshot won't be saved to your computer until this thumbnail disappears after a few seconds.

However, you can click this thumbnail before it disappears to open the screenshot in a new window. In this window, you can draw or type on it, crop it, share it via your Apple ID account, or delete it.

© William Antonelli/Business Insider You can make the floating thumbnail disappear faster by clicking and dragging it off the screen. William Antonelli/Business Insider

Taking a screenshot of a highlighted section or window

If you want to take a quick screenshot without going through the screenshot menu, you can use this shortcut.

When you press Shift + Command + 4, your mouse cursor will turn into a crosshair. You can then click and drag this crosshair across the screen to create a highlighted box — as soon as you let go of the mouse, your Mac will screenshot everything in the box.

© William Antonelli/Business Insider Everything in the highlighted box will be screenshotted. William Antonelli/Business Insider

But this isn't all you can do with this shortcut.

If you press Shift + Command + 4, and then press the spacebar, your crosshair will turn into a camera icon. You can then click on any open window to take a screenshot of that window — when the screenshot is saved, it'll have a gray border around it.

If you drag the crosshair to create a highlighted box, and then press and hold the spacebar, it'll lock the box so it can't change size. You can then drag the box anywhere on the screen. Just release the spacebar to take your screenshot.

Similarly, if you drag to create a highlighted box and then press and hold the Shift key, you can adjust solely the height or width of the box. Move your mouse up or down to adjust the height, and left or right to adjust the width. Let go of the mouse to take the screenshot.

Taking a screenshot of the entire screen

Pressing Shift + Command + 3 will immediately take a screenshot of your entire screen. If you're using multiple monitors, it'll take and save screenshots of every monitor.

Note that unless you enable it in the screenshot menu, this won't capture your mouse cursor. And if you have the floating thumbnail option enabled, taking screenshots in quick succession will capture the floating thumbnail in the corner, too.

Taking a screenshot of the Touch Bar

Not all Mac computers have the Touch Bar, a long but thin touch screen built into the keyboard. But if your MacBook does have one, you likely know how useful it can be.

If there's something on your Touch Bar that you'd like to show others, you can screenshot it by pressing Shift + Command + 6. This will immediately capture everything on your Touch Bar.

© Apple The Touch Bar screenshot will be as long as the actual Bar. Apple

If your Mac doesn't have a Touch Bar, pressing this won't do anything.

Maya Kachroo-Levine contributed to an earlier version of this article.

Related coverage from Tech Reference:

Screen Capture On Mac Using Windows Keyboard

Screenshots come in handy to show something that’d be harder to explain in words. You may have spotted them in tutorials, software reviews, tech support troubleshooting, or when you want to share your screen image and save snippets that you can’t easily print.

While you can take a screenshot on your computer using the native screen capturing tools and keyboard shortcuts, a time comes when your requirements get more advanced. That’s when you turn to specialized screen capturing tools.

Screen Capture On Windows Using Mac Keyboard

Most free screenshot tools are available for Windows. That's why we are going an extra mile to get a few good ones for Mac owners as well.

We have compiled the five free screenshot tools you can use to get you started.

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1. Skitch

This screenshot tool from the folks at Evernote performs screen capture and markup among other tasks, and edit the image too.

You can annotate screenshots with arrows, shapes, text, and stamps, perform basic cropping without using an external image editor, and save them in eight formats, which includes PNG, JPEG, GIF, and more.

Also included is the camera mode feature for taking selfies with your webcam, and then dress it up with a host of editing tools including call-outs, highlights, pixellation to blur personal information and more.

After that, you can share your creations via social media accounts, AirDrop, FTP, or Notes.

Skitch isn't without its drawbacks, though. From my time with this tool, I've found that I can't open more than one image at a time to annotate or edit.

For Mac, it's also not possible to save snaps to the local drive; the export command is used instead.

Download Skitch

2. Monosnap

This free screen capturing program only lets you snap full screen or a selected area, and it comes with a few good enhancements. So what if may not have capture options as robust as Skitch? It's still mighty useful.

The few of the coolest features are a timer, auto upload selection that captures screenshots and sends them automatically to FTP or cloud storage, screen recording captures, and selfie mode.

Its powerful editor lets you annotate your image using text, lines, arrows, cropping, drawings, and even redact personal or sensitive information. If you want a sneak peek of your snaps, the Preview feature lets you do that with the click of a button.

You can also rename your snaps and keep them in order before saving them as JPG or PNG files, and share them if you want on social media.

Monosnap is available for Windows and Mac, or you can download the Chrome extension and use it in your browser.

Download Monosnap
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3. ShareX

ShareX is a free screenshot tool (for Windows), but it isn’t as simple as using the native options for Windows or Mac. If you’re able to work your way around its interface though, you’ll find an extensive array of useful tools buried somewhere in its slightly messy interface.

Besides the different capture techniques like choosing specific regions, windows, or monitors, you can select from a variety of shapes and capture the particular area you want.

Once you’re done, you can edit using the in-house image editor. Apart from that, the editor lets you annotate, pixelate, add text, shapes, and more to your snap.

The “Scrolling Capture” option so you can screenshot a long document in any application, or capture any web address using the Webpage Capture tool.

ShareX also lets you add watermarks, blur personal or sensitive information, copy, upload, and even shorten and share the links to the images wherever you want.

It integrates with a spread of cloud storage services, and online services like Flickr, Imgur, and more than 80 other destinations.

Download ShareX

4. Lightshot

Like Monosnap, this tool lives in your system tray until you’re ready to use it.

The app packs a miniature editor for adding notes, annotations, and highlights to your snaps. After that, you can upload them to printscm.com where you can backup and share them via links.

Monosnap is an easy to use, and lightweight but is heavily loaded. The only drawback I found is that all screenshots uploaded to the cloud are open to the public. So it’s easy for others whom you shared links with to access your snaps with a few tweaks to the URL.

Download Lightshot

Show Keyboard On Screen Mac

5. Nimbus Capture: Screenshot

Nimbus Capture is a free, browser-based screenshot tool you can use on Chrome or Firefox, but also as an application for Windows and Mac.

It can capture fullscreen, an entire webpage, or selected region depending on what you want. Like other tools listed here, Nimbus Capture also offers annotation and editing tools. Also, you get a special markup tools like number stamps which can be useful for tech support tutorials or other things.

After editing the screenshots, you can print them or save to your clipboard, drive, or cloud storage for easy sharing.

A desktop version is available that offers screencasting for video recording based on the desired section of your screen, which you can access from your iOS device or the web.

Download Nimbus Capture
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Take Better Screenshots

Windows and Mac may have their native screenshot tools, but when you need more advanced features to annotate and edit your snaps, you can always choose any of the five listed here. The best part is they’re free to download and use, so you’re sure to find something that’ll fit your needs.

We’d love to hear your recommendations on other free screenshot tools you use that didn’t make it to our list. Tell us in a comment below.

Next up: Want to capture scrolling screenshots on your Mac? Here are some of the best apps to take scrolling screenshots on macOS.


The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

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