How to Print Screen on a Mac: Complete Guide

Sometimes, some important work of yours might require you to take a print of what is available on screen. Apple provides very easy way to capture and print the screen on a Mac device. Whether you want to take a screenshot, capture a portion of the screen or capture a window or menu on a Mac device, the steps for all of them are different. In this article, the complete guide to print screen on a Mac in different ways has been provided. To know more keep reading this article.

How to Take a Screenshot on your Mac 2022?

The steps to take an image of the complete screen of your Mac device are given as follows.

1. Press and hold the Shift, Command and 3 keys together to take a screenshot on your Mac.
2. A thumbnail will appear in the corner of your screen and provide you the option to edit the screenshot.
3. If you do not want to make any changes in the screenshot wait for the screenshot to be saved. The screenshot will be saved on your desktop with the name ‘Screen Shot [date] at [time].png.’.

How to Capture a Portion of the Screen?

If you wish to only capture a portion of your Mac device screen, the steps for the same are provided below.

1. Press and hold the Shift, Command and 4 keys together to capture your screen.
2. A crosshair icon will appear on the screen. Drag this icon to select the area of the screen you want to capture.
3. Press and hold Space bar while dragging the crosshair icon if you want to move the selection.
4. Now, release your mouse or track pad button to take the screenshot of the desire3d portion.
5. A thumbnail will appear in the corner of your screen and provide you the option to edit the screenshot.
6. If you do not want to make any changes in the screenshot wait for the screenshot to be saved. The screenshot will be saved on your desktop with the name ‘Screen Shot [date] at [time].png.’.

How to Capture a Window or Menu?

In case the users want to capture a window or menu on their Mac device, they can do so by following the steps provided here.

1. Open the window or menu that you want to capture.
2. Press and hold the Shift, Command, 4 and Space bar keys together.
3. Your mouse pointer will change to a camera icon.
4. Now, tap on the window or menu to capture it. If you want to exclude the window’s shadow from the screenshot, press and hold the Option key while clicking on the window.
5. A thumbnail will appear in the corner of your screen and provide you the option to edit the screenshot.
6. If you do not want to make any changes in the screenshot wait for the screenshot to be saved. The screenshot will be saved on your desktop with the name ‘Screen Shot [date] at [time].png.’.

How to Cancel a Screenshot on Mac?

If after taking a screenshot you do not wish to save it, you can cancel taking the screenshot by pressing the Esc (Escape) key. The escape key should be pressed before the saving completes.