[HN Gopher] macOS Screenshot Tricks to Impress Your Co-Workers
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macOS Screenshot Tricks to Impress Your Co-Workers
Author : salgorithm
Score : 154 points
Date : 2022-06-16 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sal.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (sal.dev)
| reaperducer wrote:
| The ones I use:
|
| [?]|3: Full-screen screenshot
|
| [?]|4: Select a screen region to screenshot
|
| [?]|6: "Screenshot" of your TouchBar.
|
| The last one is useful to me because I use the TouchBar as a tiny
| screen to output status and debugging information.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I use [?]|4 followed by space to capture a single window quite
| often, as well. Did not know about the TouchBar shortcut, as
| I've never owned a Mac with that Bar.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Tip if you're doing the [?]|4+ space trick to capture a window:
| if you hold down command while selecting a window you can grab
| things like alerts that appear as part of the window.
| muhammadusman wrote:
| Hold control to save to your clipboard instead of a
| folder/desktop.
| biggerfisch wrote:
| you can also flip these keyboard shortcuts around, which I did
| for the cmd-shift-4, as I almost always want it to the
| clipboard without persisting as a file
| inyourtenement wrote:
| Ahh that's nice
| hoten wrote:
| FYI, Cmd + Shift + 5 encapsulates all the various options into
| one UI.
| dopamean wrote:
| whoa...
| nsonha wrote:
| people love to talk about how many useful features MacOS has
| and how user-friendly it is but too many are buried behind a
| keyboard shortcut with no other way to access.
|
| And no "read the manual" isn't it. From certain scale the
| manual should be out of the window and UI should accomodate for
| people to learn while using it.
| lelandfe wrote:
| /System/Applications/Utilities/Screenshot.app
|
| (the interface of which can also be reached via Cmd-Shift-5,
| allowing video recording and much more)
| marcellus23 wrote:
| It isn't hidden behind a keyboard shortcut. CMD+Shift+5
| exposes the full screenshot UI, and under the clearly-named
| Options button is a menu that lets you pick the clipboard as
| the place to save.
|
| Holding CTRL is just a... well... "shortcut" for that.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| That is literally the definition of "hidden behind a
| keyboard shortcut" - you have to be told or lookup
| CMD+Shift-5 before you can get to the full screenshot UI.
| It's been a while since I first used MacOS, but I don't
| remember it telling me how to do that.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _That is literally the definition of "hidden behind a
| keyboard shortcut" - you have to be told or lookup
| CMD+Shift-5 before you can get to the full screenshot
| UI._
|
| Or more likely, new users search for "screenshot" in
| Spotlight the first few times, and if they do this enough
| maybe Google "mac screenshot shortcuts" (which leads them
| to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201361).
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| That's fair, particularly the "Googling it" part. Still
| don't think it falls under "intuitive" - it's not
| something I'd just try or figure out without somehow
| looking it up.
| CharlesW wrote:
| For sure. I wonder if there's a better solution short of
| a "Screenshot" key.
| hbn wrote:
| How do you want them to inform you other than RTFM and
| word of mouth?
|
| Do you want constant buttons on screen at all times for
| every possible OS-level functionality?
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I didn't give any value judgement to it and I don't have
| any suggestions as I really haven't spent a lot of time
| on that problem space. If I become an OS developer I'll
| give that problem some thought. But the idea that Mac is
| somehow "intuitive" is laughable, IMO (I say that as
| someone who has used a wide variety of computer OSes
| since the 80s).
| hbn wrote:
| It's intuitive to do the basic stuff casual users need.
| If you want to go beyond that, you figure out how by
| doing some basic research. The OS isn't going to upload
| an entire reference manual into your brain as soon as you
| boot it for the first time.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| And no one but you is claiming anything about manuals
| being beamed into brains. I disagree with the idea that
| MacOS is any more intuitive than any other modern OS
| (which is the claim that Apple and that I've heard
| others, make; I'm not saying you are making that claim
| necessarily). And to bring this back on point, to my very
| specific original comment, the poster I was responding
| too said this wasn't "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut"
| when it most definitely was. Not sure we need to delve
| into the nitty-gritty of how people learn OSes in this
| thread anymore than we have.
| nsonha wrote:
| are you not familiar with the concept of onboarding? Many
| websites and apps have this tour thing that highlight
| things that user haven't used, when appropriate.
| hbn wrote:
| The Mac does have onboarding, and it covers the basics.
| If it got into every single feature that someone calls
| "unintuitive," the onboarding would be 27 hours long
| nsonha wrote:
| > 27 hours
|
| is it in the form of non interactive animation? Yikes. If
| not, there is no problem with 27h, you just don't be
| ridiculous to do it all at once, instead of contextually.
| astrange wrote:
| There's a continual onboarding process in iOS, the Tips
| app, which I think tries to tell you details when it sees
| you doing the basics of some feature.
| nsonha wrote:
| I use the non-UI snapshot feature a lot more often than
| video capture so didn't realize that. I guess it was just a
| more general comment that comes from things like the
| switching window/app hotkeys. In this instance, there is
| another issue with finding out holding CTRL does what it
| does.
| procinct wrote:
| God damn, you just changed my life
| knolan wrote:
| Also, you only need to hold ctrl when clicking to finish, so
| less finger twister.
| cr__ wrote:
| Cmd-N in Preview to open a new window with the contents of your
| clipboard goes nicely with this.
| hbn wrote:
| Then in Preview you can hit cmd-shift-a to annotate the
| image. When you're done, cmd-a to select all, then paste
| wherever applicable. Nothing saved to disk!
| tomcam wrote:
| How tf did I not know this. Thanks
| sys_64738 wrote:
| macOS tip of the week.
| lelandfe wrote:
| It's not a very ergonomic hotkey, though. I click the preview
| that appears in the bottom right to open, CMD-C to copy, and
| then click the trash icon to not save.
| gsinclair wrote:
| With Karabiner I have q+l (hold q tap l) as an alias for that
| long and uneconomic shortcut.
| anarticle wrote:
| Swap your caps lock with control for happier pinky finger. Or
| if you're old enough to remember Sun keyboards!
| dchest wrote:
| Another cool trick: Acorn image editor can take screenshots of
| the whole desktop environment (all windows, menus, etc) and put
| them in separate layers. You can then rearrange them as you wish.
| nsonha wrote:
| not a designer but gotta appreciate this
| hbn wrote:
| If you're in the cmd-shift-4 screenshot snipping mode and you've
| already started drawing your rectangle, you can press+hold space
| and drag around to keep your rectangle the same size and move it
| around.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| This isn't totally screenshot related, but TextSniper is nice for
| quickly getting OCRed text from a selection on your screen,
| directly into your clipboard.
|
| https://textsniper.app/
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Yeah, this tool has become indispensable for me.
| [deleted]
| dagmx wrote:
| If you're on macOS 12 or iOS 15, you can also use the built in
| live text functionality in Safari, Preview or Photos
| Tagbert wrote:
| True but that only applies to images displayed using the
| standard image library. TextSniper will capture text from any
| text displayed on screen, not just within an image. I use it
| often to pull text from things shared in Zoom. You can do it
| with the built-in Livetext but you have to do a screen shot,
| them bring that up in preview to get the text OCRd.
| TextSniper makes it a single operation.
| astrange wrote:
| There's a bunch of similar tools on Windows, usually for
| machine translating video games that haven't been localized.
|
| eg https://github.com/Artikash/Textractor
| mrzool wrote:
| I use macOCR[1] from the terminal for that.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/schappim/macOCR
| informalo wrote:
| You can also easily stitch something like that together
| yourself.
|
| After `brew install pngpaste tesseract` (the latter is a
| dependency of the great OCRmyPDF tool btw), you can set
| `alias ocr="pngpaste - | tesseract -c debug_file=/dev/null
| stdin stdout | pbcopy; pbpaste"`.
|
| I like having this alias better than macOCR because the
| workflow feels more ergonomic: You first cmd + shift + 4 to
| select text and then type `ocr` with the result being printed
| to stdout and being saved in your clipboard. With macOCR I
| have to go to the terminal first to initiate the process,
| then go back to what I want to screenshot etc.
| blesswinsamuel wrote:
| Similar tool, but open source -
| https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > How can you make full-app screenshots ([?] | 5 then space bar)
|
| Ahem, cough ... Mr Testa, its 4, not 5 for full-app screenshots.
| ;-)
| salgorithm wrote:
| Fixed! Thanks for the help. I think 4 might technically work,
| but I meant to say "4", not "5".
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| 4 is cropping
| saagarjha wrote:
| Right, but when you press the spacebar it lets you select a
| window.
| jiux wrote:
| Here's how to set screenshots to save in your Downloads folder:
|
| defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Downloads &&
| killall SystemUIServer
| lewisgodowski wrote:
| Or press command+shift+5 click the "Options" button, and then
| the "Other Location..." option in the "Save to" menu, like it
| shows in the article.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| TinkerTool lets you edit the Destination Folder, Format and
| some additional screenshot settings. I much prefer this because
| it allows me to quickly check the current setting as opposed to
| a "black box" CLI command.
| lloeki wrote:
| Maybe? defaults read
| com.apple.screencapture location
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Screenshots folder in the Dock FTW!!
|
| I must confess, I was pretty sure I'd learn nothing by clicking
| in. I was pleasantly surprised, thanks!
| salgorithm wrote:
| You're welcome! I'm glad it was helpful.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I usually use COMMAND+SHIFT+4 to select an area to take a
| screenshot of and then "Save to Clipboard".
| obel1x wrote:
| When you are selecting an area you can hold option when
| dragging to move the top and left sides of the rectangle. This
| is useful to select exactly the right area.
| susam wrote:
| Here is a key sequence I use very often. It takes a screenshot of
| a chosen window without the window's shadow.
|
| - First, type command + shift + 4 (the mouse pointer turns into
| crosshair).
|
| - Then type the space bar (the crosshair turns into a camera
| icon).
|
| - Hover the mouse pointer (a camera icon now), to highlight the
| chosen window.
|
| - Finally, hold the option key and click.
|
| This sounds like a lot of steps but it becomes muscle memory
| pretty quickly.
| hoten wrote:
| FYI, Cmd + Shift + 5 encapsulates all the various options into
| one UI.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| and adds screen recording functionality as a video
| behnamoh wrote:
| I used to use Kap for that to convert video to gif
| afterwards, but this just gives me one less app to use!
| brew uninstall kap
| sircastor wrote:
| I've been using this to visually demonstrate features in
| pull requests. Combined with Gifski for gifs, it's really
| nice.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Yeah but it's nice to just press keys instead of point and
| click with CMD-SHIFT-5 options.
| alx__ wrote:
| Cmd + Shift + 5 will also give you access to some of options
| (as noted in the article)
|
| Then let you adjust the selection area in relaxed way
|
| I always make sure to enable "Remember Last Selection", which
| is great when you're taking repeated screenshots of the same
| area. Once you've created the selection area you'll get exact
| sizes every time.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > - Hover the mouse pointer (a camera icon now), to highlight
| the chosen window.
|
| bruh, what, god tier shortcut here
| pishpash wrote:
| What does holding option do?
| oblosys wrote:
| It removes the shadow around the window.
| dopamean wrote:
| I think that's the part that removes the shadow.
| faitswulff wrote:
| I just figured out that these generate really nice transparent
| borders, which they use to add shadows. They look great when
| you put them in, e.g., Notion docs.
| [deleted]
| giantrobot wrote:
| Add in the control key in the shortcut above and the screenshot
| will go to the clipboard instead of a file. Useful for pasting
| a screenshot into something like Messages or Slack.
|
| Also there's no need to hold down Option when clicking. You can
| however hit Esc to cancel the screenshot action.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Dang, these little tricks are so useful!
|
| Combination of CTRL+OPTION works too.
| usehackernews wrote:
| I just tested it -
|
| Holding option seems to remove the gradient shadow of the
| application window in the screenshot. Not needed, but it's
| better in my opinion.
| behnamoh wrote:
| You can change the Screenshots icon to something else too. Mine
| looks like this:
|
| https://i.postimg.cc/zX5f4fqN/1.png
|
| Makes it easier to find visually.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Man, you guys are changing my life. LOL. I knew about cmd-
| shift-4 (and the ctrl version), but I never knew about hitting
| spacebar to make it do a window.
| petercooper wrote:
| Since we're all sharing here, another tool I often use is
| Paparazzi - you give it a URL and it creates a screenshot of the
| site (including scrolling as needed). A nice way to keep a visual
| snapshot of a site for future reference. Its on the App Store or
| at https://derailer.org/paparazzi/
| gkop wrote:
| Shameless question: is there a special trick to specify a
| filename for my screenshots in macOS? I manually rename after,
| and it's cumbersome.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is entering the name in advance as you're requesting really any
| less cumbersome than renaming a generically named file after
| the fact?
|
| In your request, you must provide a file name every time. In
| the current method, you can just take the snap and not waste
| time with the filename unless you really just need/want to do
| it for reasons.
| gkop wrote:
| I didn't say in advance. I'm open to after the fact, but in a
| seamless flow that doesn't require using Finder, the
| terminal, or any other tool.
|
| As others in the thread mention, once you've taken the
| screenshot, it helpfully dumps you in "the editor" (is this
| Preview.app? I don't know because it doesn't have a title
| bar..). In the editor, I am give the option to do a bunch of
| things, but no option to rename the screenshot. This is
| disappointing (compared to Gnome for example, which lets you
| just accept the default generated filename, or specify your
| own, zero friction). Hence I was hoping somebody here could
| fill me in on the trick that will make me happy..
|
| (my complaint scoped to Big Sur btw)
| geraldcombs wrote:
| I usually use the screencapture command to take screenshots since
| it lets me specify an output file, e.g.
| screencapture -ow /tmp/myapplication.png
| alx__ wrote:
| This is what Cmd + Shift + 3|4|5 is using under the hood. It's
| great to use for bash scripting if you need a precise type of
| screenshot
| dagmx wrote:
| You can just hit the option key to take a screenshot of an app
| without the shadow. No need to go and change system wide defaults
| hbn wrote:
| There isn't that much practical reason to include the shadow
| though. In fact it tends to just make the important stuff
| smaller when sharing with someone because there's a bunch of
| border space surrounding the content, and whatever they're
| viewing in will show all of that unless they zoom in.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| There's no contrast between a white window and a white
| background if you don't have the shadow.
| quitit wrote:
| This is the real tip.
| robenkleene wrote:
| One for people like me who love to get the padding just right:
| Hold spacebar while dragging a screenshot area to reposition the
| _upper-left_ corner of the drag area.
| njhaveri wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea about this one! Thanks so much for this tip!
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Oh my goodness thank you so much macOS for giving us a set of
| awesome screenshot tools and a way to edit them immediately in
| Preview.app. (Capture to clipboard, then command-N in Preview
| defaulting to new-from-clipboard.)
|
| It's so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen,
| draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker
| in chat or a task tool.
|
| I recently discovered that with my trusty Logitech G203 I can
| write cursive on my images with about the same legibility as I
| can on a whiteboard. Very pleasing.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It's so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the
| screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to
| a coworker in chat or a task tool._
|
| You can make it even faster by cutting out the Preview step.
| When the thumbnail of the screenshot appears in the lower-right
| corner of the screen, click it, and then you can use Markup to
| annotate the image right there, and then share it as needed.
|
| Since I don't have your Logitech, I don't know if this method
| will support your hand-writing step. But it's worth a try, and
| is still useful for drawing circles and arrows and things on
| screenshots before firing them off to a coworker.
| aidos wrote:
| You say share as needed, but I've not found a great way to
| just grab it to the clipboard or get the file handle from
| there.
|
| My go to workaround is to screenshot, annotate, screenshot
| the annotation tool into clipboard and paste that. (I know)
| gorgoiler wrote:
| You are in good company. I often screenshot two things,
| arrange the windows next to or on top of each other,
| screenshot _that_ and use it as the backdrop for my world
| domination plans / next releng planning meeting.
| reaperducer wrote:
| The two ways I do it are:
|
| 1. If the program I'm trying to share with is available in
| the Share control, I use that.
|
| 2. Since I already have a Screenshots folder in my dock
| that displays as a fan, and is sorted by most recently
| added, I click "done" on the annotated screenshot, then I
| can click on that folder in the dock, and it's right there,
| ready to be dragged into any other application.
| aidos wrote:
| This is a reasonable way of dealing with it. I've just
| created the dock folder and now it's a lot easier to get
| to (except that I have dock as minimal as possible, so
| it's still a little fiddly). It does feel like just
| hitting ctrl-c in annotations should copy to clipboard.
|
| I know pretty much every other combination of screenshot
| shortcut mentioned here, but this workflow has irked me
| ever since they added the annotation tools. I can work
| with this, thanks!
| rektide wrote:
| its confusing & painful as heck to me that these are different
| tools with different interfaces & capabilities.
| battle_hardened wrote:
| I dunno. I think the shadow looks good
| user3939382 wrote:
| My workflow is take it, mark it up with Skitch if necessary, drop
| it in Slack or Trello and delete it.
| wasyl wrote:
| Is there any trick to record a video of a given app window only
| (or that covers area of a window)? Making screenshot is easy with
| pressing `space`, is there an equivalent for videos?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Is there any trick to record a video of a given app window
| only_
|
| Quicktime Player does this.
|
| New Screen Recording - Capture Selected Window
| lelandfe wrote:
| note that this is just a proxy for Cmd-Shift-5, and only
| takes a screenshot (not a recording)
| [deleted]
| CTmystery wrote:
| Doesn't record a video, but I've been a happy user of LICEcap
| to make animated gifs of a portion of the screen that I share
| with co-workers (to github, slack, etc.)
| nneonneo wrote:
| Yes, Cmd+Shift+5 and "record selected portion".
| saagarjha wrote:
| I think the goal was to record just the window, rather than a
| region of the screen.
| trs8080 wrote:
| That's the "Capture Selected Window" option.
| brailsafe wrote:
| but specifically for video it doesn't exist
| mhink wrote:
| Not a trick per se, but I use Giphy Capture for this kind of
| thing.
| smileysteve wrote:
| I recommend against changing the format from png to jpg. The
| sample shows a picture of a dog, but most screenshots should be
| of applications (having a limited color palette) and must of the
| time the goal is readability (jpg compression drastically reduces
| text clarity relative to png)
| tobr wrote:
| > (having a limited color palette)
|
| With translucency and soft gradients everywhere I'm not sure
| how true that is anymore.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| PNG should be just as good at gradients as it is at constant
| color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphic
| s#Filt...
|
| It can encode the difference to the previous pixel either up
| or above (or some combination). In purely horizontal or
| vertical gradients that's just as efficient as encoding
| constant color (and in fact, the Wikipedia page shows an
| example). For gradients in other directions, it depends on
| how homogeneous the slope is (because it will zip the diff to
| the previous pixel, i.e. the slope).
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Doesn't that example show that a 256-step gradient takes
| 256 bytes? A 256-step run of the same colour takes just a
| couple of bytes due to RLE, doesn't it? (Not an expert.)
| dontbenebby wrote:
| I agree with you parent.
|
| Also, I was surprised one common hack I used to see talked
| about a lot not dicussed given they delved into changes you can
| make on the CLI: you can change the default location (Eg to a
| "Screenshots" folder) instead of the default of cluttering the
| desktop
|
| In terminal type "defaults write com.apple.screencapture
| location" where "location" is a path of your choosing.
|
| (I'm fond of nesting a "screenshots" folder in the user
| directory pictures folder.)
| 333c wrote:
| The post mentions doing this through the UI (no need for the
| terminal command).
| jiveturkey wrote:
| nice. one blog post per year. this one is certainly once-a-year
| worthy.
| kzrdude wrote:
| the imagemagick trick was even useful to us linux aficionados
| salgorithm wrote:
| Thank you! It's a fun tradition.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| Want a quick measurement in px for something on your screen? CMD
| + SHIFT + 4 for the crosshairs, drag from origin to destination,
| observe the measurement in px. Press ESC to not capture anything.
|
| (Only works for horizontal or vertical measurements, unless
| you're good at doing pythagorean theorem in your head)
| CharlesW wrote:
| Free Ruler (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free-
| ruler/id1483172210?mt=12) is handy to have if you find yourself
| needing this functionality often.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Random, related wish: I've always wanted a screenshot utility
| that captured windows/screens as PDFs (or SVGs), with each
| element as separate objects at their highest-available
| resolutions. For example, icons would be 512x512px objects.
| Vector representations would be created for controls like
| windows, menus, and buttons.
| m1keil wrote:
| If you need to do any image manipulations/highlight on your
| screenshots, two of the best tools I found are:
|
| 1) Monosnap (freemium) - https://monosnap.com
|
| 2) Cleanshot ($29) - https://cleanshot.com
|
| Both tools also include large amount of extra functionality for
| taking screenshots and recordings.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Cleanshot might be the best value for money I've ever had from
| a paid software utility.
|
| It's truly excellent and feels like a natural extension of the
| built-in functionality.
| moltar wrote:
| Love Cleanshot! It's so fast and snappy. A rare treat.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| a FOSS alternative is https://flameshot.org/
| shmoogy wrote:
| I felt $29 was a bit much considering greenshot and other free
| things on windows that do similar ... but I use it hundreds of
| times some days and it's overall great.
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| Huge +1 to CleanShot (and PixelSnap). Definitely worth the
| money considering I use CleanShot daily. Quick annotations,
| simple video capture and re-encoding. The integration with
| PixelSnap is really nice as my screenshots have consistent
| padding. A small thing, but it takes me zero effort and is
| aesthetically pleasing.
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(page generated 2022-06-16 23:00 UTC)