How to Print Screen on a Mac (Take a Screen Shot)

Most computers running the Microsoft Windows Operating System have a convenient Print Screen button (or Prnt Scrn) on their keyboards by default that allows the user to capture a screenshot of the entire screen; however, that’s not the same for Macintosh Operating Systems, though Mac OS X computers provide several options to print the screen, including taking a screenshot (similar to the Print Screen option on Windows computers), capturing a selected portion of the screen, and capturing the screen of a selected application window.

This page details how to easily do a Print Screen or take different types of Screenshots on a Mac computer using the generic Mac keyboard setup.

How to Print Screen on a Mac (Screen Shot)

The instructions below detail how to take a complete screenshot on a Mac (like the image above).

1. Press the Command button or Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 3 at the same time

2. You will now find a screen capture on your Mac desktop labeled “Picture_” or “Screen Shot” followed by the date and time.

How to capture a selected portion of the screen on a Mac

The instructions below detail how to capture a selected portion of the screen on a Mac.

1. Press the Command button or Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4 at the same time
2. The cursor will change to +
3. Drag a box around the selection of the screen you wish to capture and release the mouse
4. You will now find a screen capture on your Mac desktop labeled “Picture_” or “Screen Shot” followed by the date and time.

How to screen capture an application window on a Mac

The instructions below detail how to take a screen capture of a selected application window on a Mac. This will only capture the selected window.

1. Press the Command button or Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4 at the same time
2. The cursor will change to +
3. Press the Spacebar
4. The cursor will now change into a camera. Simply click the application window you wish to be captured.
5. You will now find a screen capture of the application window on your Mac desktop labeled “Picture_” or “Screen Shot” followed by the date and time.