Mojave Screen Capture Options

added significant functionality to how we can control what happens after we take screenshots. While the default keyboard shortcuts remain the same, we can now choose where a screenshot is saved, or if the screenshot should automatically go to an app instead of a file. This allows you to easily name screenshots, delete ones we don't want without ever saving them, and even mark them up before saving.


Video Transcript CLICK TO EXPAND
Screenshots in Mac OS Mojave have changed a lot. However, if you don't know where to look you may not notice the changes and notice all the cool things you can now do with Screenshots. So let's start by taking a look in System Preferences at the Keyboard shortcuts because that's what we mostly use to do Screenshots. If I go into Keyboard and then I look at Shortcuts and then I click on Screenshots we'll see all the different Screenshot keyboard combinations.

Four of them are the same as before. For instance you have Shift Command 3 is for the entire screen saving it as a file. Add Control key to that and you're saving to the Clipboard. Shift Command 4 is to select an area which is far more useful usually. Add Control to that and you're saving to the Clipboard rather than a file. The big new one is Shift Command 5 for all these different options. Now some of you may have noticed the Shift Command 5 and how useful that is but it does create a lot of extra steps. So I'll do Shift Command 5 here and I can choose between capturing the entire screen, selected window, or a portion of the screen which is far more useful. You get this box here that you can now drag around and select an area. You also have screen recording for video.

But the Option selection is where there is a lot of power. Here you can determine where you want to save the files to. So in the past a lot of people complained that they don't want them to be saved to the desktop. They want them somewhere else. So you can choose Desktop or Documents. You can also choose Other Locations and choose any folder you want very easily. Once you choose this the keyboard shortcuts will follow suit. You can also say I want it to go to the Clipboard which effects what you're doing right here or an app like Mail, Messages, or Preview.

Now the Preview option is very powerful because instead of actually having it save the file it opens it up in Preview. Now you have to do Command S to save. This fulfills what a lot of people want in terms of naming. If you just say Desktop or Documents you get a file name that is basically the time stamp. A lot of people wanted to name the file before they save it. That's what Preview does. You select Preview and then you capture the selection here, I'll just use the Capture button here, and it will open it up in Preview. There it is. Now I can see it's untitled. The very next thing I can do is Command S and I'm giving it a file name. So that's how you get the screen capture to work when you want to name each screen capture as you do it.

Also you have options here for Timer. So you can actually have it delay the screenshot. That's useful if you want to choose menus at the top to show what menu you're using. You have five to ten seconds to do that. The Floating Thumbnail option though is super useful because what it will do is instead of saving the file automatically it puts it as a thumbnail at the bottom right hand corner and you can either wait for that to go away and it will save using whatever option you wanted. So let's say if you wanted to save to the desktop we're going to use the floating thumbnail. If I were to capture you can see it appears there as a floating thumbnail at the bottom right hand corner and I just wait and wait and maybe go on and do what I'm doing. After a few seconds it will go away and save to the desktop because that's the option that I chose. There it is. So I've got the functionality I originally had except that I have that delay.

So what good is the delay. Well, you can click on that thumbnail. So let's try this again. Instead of actually doing Command Shift 5 I'm going to do Command Shift and 4 to capture an area. Now it puts it in a thumbnail. I'm going to click on the thumbnail and it opens it up and gives you all these markup tools. So right away the first thing I can do is I can mark it up. So I can add text. I can draw a line. I can do shapes. Whatever I want. I can even crop it here with the cropping tool. Now if I hit Done or I Dismiss it, it's going to actually put the file right where it would have been before. So the same functionality as before.

But I do have the option to do it a little bit better. I can click on it and instead of doing that I can hit the Share button. The Share button I can open it in Preview. I can also send it to Notes or Messages as well. But Preview then gives me that functionality that I wanted before where now I can do Command S and save it with a file name. So you have a lot more options when you use the Floating Thumbnail.

Also notice that another option I had was a Trashcan. So there's the Trashcan. Now I can look at what I've captured and say, yeah that's no good, hit Trash and I'm back to where I started. That's really nice. Instead of creating a bunch of screenshots and littering your desktop or some other folder with all these screenshots you're going to forget to delete, you can basically keep trying the screenshot over and over again until you get what you want. Instead of then deleting it hit Done to have it automatically saved there. You can save as Preview and then give it a file name.

Now if you don't want to have the Floating Thumbnail at all you can certainly turn that off. You can turn it off here and then whatever option you've chosen up here will happen immediately. So it can immediately go to Preview, or immediately go and save to the desktop or wherever you want it. Now we can try this out. For instance here instead of hitting the capture button I'll Dismiss this and do Command Shift 4 and grab a section. You can see it goes right to Preview. If I change it to Save to Desktop then when I do Command Shift 4 it immediately saves it to the desktop.

So you have all these different options you never had before. It's just a matter of figuring out how you want to do screenshots and setting up those options. Then if you like just return to using Command Shift 3, Command Shift 4 to do your screenshots. Just use Command Shift 5 to set the Options.

Related Posts:
Automating Complicated Text Inserts, Creating Dynamic Pop-Up Menus In Numbers With AppleScript, How Do I Avoid Simultaneous Screenshots When Working With 2 Monitors?, How Do I Screen Capture a Video With Sound?