Mac OS X Window Screenshot Hacks

Mac OS provides an handy way of taking any window screenshot by using two commands; Command + Shift + 4 or Command + Shift + 4 + Spacebar. The fist command allows you to drag the portion of screen you willing to capture the screenshot. The Command + Shift + 4 in combination of Spacebar, captures the screenshot of complete selected window.

This post will guide you througn some of the tricks you can use for your convinience while capturing the window screenshot in Mac.

Change Screenshot Save Location

By defaly all the screenshots captured in Mac are saved as a transparent PNG file on Desktop. You can change the location to your desired folder using the following commands.

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/Neel/Pictures/screenshots

In the above command, I have selected screenshots folder inside Pictures directory. You can replace with your own desired location. For this command to take the immediately effect you need to restart the system UI by using the following commands.

$ killall SystemUIServer

Remove Window Drop Shadow

The Command + Shift + 4 in combination of Spacebar, captures the screenshot of complete selected window. By defauly all the window screenshots includes drop shadow beneath the window. The following screenshot depicts a screenshow taken with shadow.

Shadow may be usesful at times but sometimes it causes real inconvenience. You can remove the window shadow by calling the following commands.

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

For this command to take the immediately effect you need to restart the system UI by using the following commands.

$ killall SystemUIServer

Now your window screenshot will not have any shadow.

If you willing to revert back the shadow background for window screenshot, you can use the following command.

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false