How to Take Screenshots in OS X

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The print screen key -- you never know you'll miss it until it's gone. Apple dispensed with the key entirely, opting for a key combination instead for capturing screenshots. As a result, new Mac users will likely become confused when they try to capture an image of their screen. Thankfully, Apple offers numerous, easy-to-remember keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots.

1. Pressing Command-Shift-3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen and saves it on the desktop.

2. Pressing Command-Shift-4, then selecting an area of the screen, takes a screenshot of the selected area and saves it on the desktop.

3. Pressing Command-Shift-4, then Space Bar, then clicking on a window takes a screenshot of that window and saves it to the desktop.

Here's a great bonus tip. Adding Control to all of the above methods saves the screenshot to the clipboard rather than the desktop.

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David Eitelbach

David was a writer at Laptop Mag. His coverage spanned how-to guides, reviews, and product rankings. He reviewed Asus, Lenovo, and Gigabyte laptops; guided readers on how to do various things in Excel, and even how to force quit an app in macOS. Outside of Laptop Mag, his work has appeared on sites such as Tom's Guide and TechRadar.