Anyone who uses a Mac regularly knows that macOS’s screenshot abilities are pretty solid, but they could always be better. Third-party screenshot applications offer a lot of features that you might not have otherwise known you needed.
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RELATED:How to Take Screenshots on a Mac
Best Free Screen Capture & Video Recording Software TinyTake is a free screen capture & video recording software for Microsoft Windows & Mac. With TinyTake, you can capture images and videos of your computer screen, add comments and share them with others in minutes. The apps for screen capturing in Mac OS X have recently increased in the market with every other app seeming to be similar to the next one. So to assist you in choosing just the right screenshot capture app for Mac OS X we have mentioned only the best apps currently in the market.
It’s true, you may be able to get by without ever requiring any additional software. You can already take full screen, selection, and window captures with just a few keyboard shortcuts, and Preview can make quick work of any light editing.
But if you want an all-in-one alternative that offers more capture choices, annotation tools, and even sharing, then there are some excellent options.
Skitch
Skitch is How-To Geek’s go-to favorite screenshot app for macOS, and with good reason: it has pretty much everything we need.
Skitch lets you take screenshots from a selected area (with or without a timer), of the full screen, of a window, or of specific menus. There’s even an included “camera” mode, which lets you take selfies with your webcam.
Windows has about a billion screen capture tools (give or take), but we dig PicPick's huge list of options, built-in photo editor, ability to upload photos to FTP, and its $0 price tag. Best Free Screen Capture & Video Recording Software TinyTake is a free screen capture & video recording software for Microsoft Windows & Mac. With TinyTake, you can capture images and videos of your computer screen, add comments and share them with others in minutes.
Once you’ve captured the perfect screenshot, Skitch will let you dress it up with a multitude of editing tools, including arrows, lines, shapes, highlights, callouts, and pixelation for obscuring personal information. You can then save your final screenshot in one of eight file formats.
With Skitch, you can share your creations via AirDrop, Notes, FTP, or your social media accounts. Also, because Skitch is an Evernote product, you can sign into your Evernote account and save your snaps there.
![Best Best](https://is5-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Purple69/v4/62/c6/e0/62c6e0d8-1033-809d-8c7c-d24b182213d2/mzl.nqwgkyyl.jpg/643x0w.jpg)
Monosnap
It’s difficult to place Monosnap in second, because it has a lot going for it…so much so, that it might be more of a tie.
Monosnap doesn’t have quite as robust capture options as Skitch, only giving you the ability to snap a selection or the full screen. However, it throws in a few enhancements, such as the ability to take full screen screenshots with a timer, or auto upload selection captures to your FTP or cloud storage.
It also has a selfie mode, as well as the ability to create screen recordings.
That’s not bad for a free app, but where Monosnap really shines is in the editing department. Just like Skitch, you can go to town on your screenshots with text, arrows, lines, drawings, cropping, and redact sensitive or revealing information. It will even let you open your snaps in Preview with the click of a button.
Additionally, you can rename your shots (which is a pretty nice touch for those who like to keep everything in order) before you save them as PNG or JPG.
Finally, you can share your snaps on social media, and if you want to add Dropbox, Evernote, Box, Yandex.Disk, and CloudApp integration, you can upgrade for $4.99.
Clarify
Clarify has a lot going for it. It’s a capable screenshot program with an interesting twist: it’s designed for creating how-to guides with your screenshots.
When you take your screenshots, you can add them to a document as “steps”. Give your document and each step a title, add accompanying text, and if needed, annotate everything with lines, text, highlights, shapes, and so on.
You can then save the whole shebang in one proprietary .clarify file for later editing; export it to PDF, Word, or HTML; or just save a single screenshot as a PNG or JPG. You can also share your creations via Dropbox, Evernote, as a WordPress blog post, or through Clarify’s own sharing service.
It’s a little unconventional, and will set you back $14.99, but if you need to explain a process to a friend or family member, Clarify makes it really easy to illustrate things in a concise, easy manner.
Captur
Captur is decidedly simple, and that’s kind of what we like about it. It doesn’t come with any fancy editing tools or social media integration like the others on this list, but you can take instant or timed full screen, selection, and window captures.
Once you have your screenshot, you can save it, or edit it in Preview.
The name of the game with Captur is simplicity. It sits in the menu bar giving you just a few more options in addition to your Mac’s own native screenshot powers. For example, you can easily change the file format, destination, default file name, as well as add times and dates to all your captures. It’s only slightly more advanced than macOS’ built-in offerings, but in just the right places. So if you don’t need a full-fledged screenshot app with all those other bells and whistles, you might give Captur a whirl.
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Snagit
Snagit gives you pretty much everything you could ever need. It can not only take screenshots and add a dizzying array of annotations, but it can also take and trim video recordings, create animated GIFs, take scrolling captures (full screen snaps of stuff that you have to scroll to see), take panoramic captures (for wide horizontal or infinitely scrolling pages), and much more.
Snagit is probably the most powerful screenshot application on the Mac, so why is it here at the bottom? Its $49.95 price tag (ouch). That’s quite a bit of moolah for a screenshot app, no matter how powerful it is.
You can try Snagit for free for up to 14 days though, so depending on what you need, give it a shot—you may decide it’s well worth the price.
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When you want to take a screenshot on your Mac, you have both native and third-party tools to choose from. Let’s see how to make the best of those and explore some useful tricks along the way.
How to Take Screenshots on Mac With Keyboard Shortcuts
macOS has a few default keyboard shortcuts to help you capture the screen instantly. We’ll go through them one by one, as which one to use depends on what exactly you want to take a screenshot of.
(Having trouble? Ensure that you haven’t disabled these shortcuts under System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screenshots.)
Capture the Entire Screen
For this, you need the shortcut Cmd + Shift + 3. It takes a snapshot of the entire screen and saves it to the desktop as a PNG image.
Want to copy the screenshot to the clipboard instead of saving it automatically? Add the Control key to the keyboard shortcut—hit Control + Cmd + Shift + 3. For more on this basic procedure, see how to copy and paste on your MacHow to Copy and Paste on a MacHow to Copy and Paste on a MacOur look at how to copy and paste on Mac gives you everything you need to manage your clipboard like a pro.Read More.
Capture a Part of the Screen
You’ll need to hit Cmd + Shift + 4 if you want to snap a specific portion of the screen. This shortcut turns the cursor into a crosshair; you can then click and drag it across the part of the screen you want to capture.
While making the selection, hold down the Shift key if you want to limit your adjustments to either the X or Y axis. If you’d like to resize your selection proportionally from the center, hold down the Option key. If you want to move the selection, hold down Space instead.
(Changed your mind about taking the screenshot? No problem. Hit the Escape key to cancel the action.)
Once you’re satisfied with the selection, release the mouse. The screenshot then saves to the desktopWhere Do Screenshots and Photos Go on a Mac?Where Do Screenshots and Photos Go on a Mac?Where do screenshots go on Mac? Here's how to take, find, and manage macOS screenshots and video recordings.Read More as a PNG file. As above, if you want to copy the captured image to the clipboard instead of saving it, you’ll need to tweak the shortcut a bit. Modify the shortcut to Control + Cmd + Shift + 4 to copy.
Capture an Application Window
Want to take a screenshot of the active window? First hit Cmd + Shift + 4. Then hit Space, and you’ll see the crosshair turn into a camera.
The active window appears highlighted, and if you click the camera, you get a screenshot of the window. Before clicking, you can also choose to move the focus of the camera to a different window.
If you want to take a timed screenshot, you’ll need to open your Mac’s built-in screenshot utility. We’ll discuss it in the next section.
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How to Take Screenshots on Mac With the Screenshot App
Under Applications > Utilities, you’ll find your Mac’s stock screen capture app, aptly named Screenshot. You can also bring up this app with the shortcut Cmd + Shift + 5.
(If you’re on a pre-Mojave Mac, look for the Grab app instead of Screenshot in the Utilities folder.)
With Screenshot, Apple has simplified the whole screen capture process. The app is useful if you prefer a more point-and-click approach over keyboard shortcuts.
Screenshot’s toolbar has three buttons that make screen capture quick and painless: Capture Entire Screen, Capture Selected Window, and Capture Selected Portion. (The app also has a couple of buttons for screen recording.)
For timed selections, click on the Options button in the toolbar. You’ll find the timer options in the menu that shows up.
After you take a screenshot, you’ll see a tiny thumbnail of it at the bottom-right of the screen. It leads to a special window with tools for editing and annotating your screenshots. They let you add text, sketches, shapes, and even your signature to a screenshot. This Markup utility is one of the best new features of macOS Mojave.
If you want to turn off the thumbnail feature, uncheck the Show Floating Thumbnail item in the Options menu from the screenshot toolbar.
Configuring Screenshot Settings on Mac
You might want to, say, change the default screenshot format or change where screenshots get saved. In such cases, you’ll need to execute a command from the Terminal app. Let’s take a look at three of the most handy commands.
We have appended each command with a second one that’s needed to cement the changes. It reads:
To Change the Default Screenshot Format
You can save screenshots to other formats like JPG, BMP, and PDF. You’ll need to replace [file type] in the command below with the relevant three-letter format name.
To Change Where Screenshots Get Saved
In macOS Mojave, you can change the default destination folder directly from the Screenshot app. To do this, click on the Options button in the screenshot toolbar and select a folder of your choice under the Save To section of the consequent menu.
On a non-Mojave Mac, you’ll have to rely on this Terminal command:
Replace [path] with the new Finder save location that reads something like this:
You can either type the pathname into Terminal, or drag and drop the relevant folder into Terminal to paste its pathname. Alternatively, you can also copy the pathname and then paste it into Terminal.
You’ll find the Copy as Pathname command in the destination folder’s right-click context menu. However, the command appears only when you hold down the Option key while right-clicking.
To Change the Default File Name for Screenshots
If you want to replace the default prefix (Screen Shot) in screenshot names with a different keyword, try this command:
Be sure to replace [file name] in the command with the new keyword before execution.
If you’d rather not fiddle with the Terminal, install a utility that lets you tweak macOS settings without Terminal commands.
How to Take Screenshots on Mac With Preview
The Preview app on your Mac also allows you to take screenshots. It’s just one of the essential macOS Preview tricks10 Essential Tips and Tricks for Preview on the Mac10 Essential Tips and Tricks for Preview on the MacPreview is an unassuming app that can do the job of half a dozen standalone utilities.Read More you’ll want to know about.
The advantage of using Preview for screenshots is that you can specify a different file format and save location with each new capture. Of course, you can also instantly edit the screenshot in Preview before saving it.
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You’ll find the screenshot tools in Preview under File > Take Screenshot. Unfortunately, a timed screenshot option is missing here.
The Best Screenshot Apps for macOS
Want advanced features that aren’t included in one of the native screen capture tools? Try one of the three third-party tools below.
1. Monosnap
This app sits in your Mac’s menu bar and you can access it with a keyboard shortcut. Monosnap lets you edit screenshots and add arrows, boxes, and text to them. You can also blur elements, highlight specific areas, and upload screenshots to the cloud. Monosnap made it to our list of the top Mac menu bar apps.
Download:Monosnap (Free)
2. Skitch
This app lets you capture various onscreen elements and edit/annotate them without having to open another app. Skitch also supports timed screenshots.
Download:Skitch (Free)
3. Snappy
Get Snappy if your work involves collaborating on screenshots or “snaps” often. You can not only edit and annotate screenshots as usual, but also share them with ease. The sharing options include a password-protection feature and a self-destruct timer.
Download:Snappy (Free)
Get Familiar With Screen Capture on Mac
Now you have all the information you need to take and edit screenshots on your Mac quickly and efficiently. How about mastering the basics of iPhone screenshots next? Better yet, learn how to add borders to your screenshotsHow to Add Borders to Photos: 9 Easy Methods Anyone Can UseHow to Add Borders to Photos: 9 Easy Methods Anyone Can UseThese apps and sites can help take your images to the next level by easily adding borders and frames to your photos.Read More to brighten them up!
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Explore more about: Mac Tips, macOS Mojave, Screen Capture, Screenshots.
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- I use Lightshot and I'm happy with it.
- Extra useful tips and commands, thanks for publishing them. Now if someone just could tell me how I can paste a screen shot or a capture of a screen section into Word, i'd be ecstatic. I have the images on the clipboard, I can paste them into Mail but not into Word (it just pastes the name of the .png file)....