macOS Quick Tip: Screenshot Straight to the Clipboard

[TracesOfArsenic]

Just use CleanShot X. Paid app but it's the best utility on macOS by a long shot.

 

[freezelighter]

Thank you and please more of these! Gives me a kind of retro feel, can't explain. Those tutorials we used to read on forums back in 2010, before the world became crazy... 😭🙏

 

[svish]

Very useful tip and easy too. Will definitely use this in the future when needed!

 

[rozgab]

The number of times I need to quickly grab an area of the screen and paste it into a slide deck or email is constant.

Much though I love macOS, Control-Shift-Command-4 is THE most useful badly buried shortcut in the whole system. Technically, it is logical. In reality it's hideous and impossible to remember. Its equivalent in Windows is Win+Shift+S, which is much easier.

On International / British keyboards, there is an extra § button which is very rarely used. So using Keyboard Shortcuts, I have remapped Control-Shift-Command-4 to Command+§. I highly recommend this and I use it all the time.

 

[w4th0]

Since I almost always prefer my screenshots to go into clipboard instead being saved to a file I switched the shortcuts around in settings some 4 years ago. Shift-Command-3 (or 4) for screenshot to clipboard, and with added control key to save into a file. Just works better for me that way.

On a side note, some of these MacOS keyboard "shortcuts" with 4 keys are just ridiculous.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

TechSmith's Snag-It -- best screen capture program ever. I use it on my Windows and Mac's and by keeping the library on OneDrive, am able to share all my screenshots (Snags) available on all my platforms and devices (except iPhone--damn you TechSmith). Annotating and editing of screenshots is built in and super easy. And best of all, I don't need to use finger gymnastics to take screenshot!

 

[wdw_]

I remember learning ALL this back when I was using Mac OS 9. Literally all these commands existed like 30 years ago. Although, back then I would’ve said Apple-shift-3. 😆

 

[an77tong]

Better too many shortcuts than too few. Nobody forces you to use or memorize them. And for those of us who prefer keyboard control, having to use the mouse for more than we already do would suck.

You can also remap most shortcuts to the keys you want

 

[shamino]

Screenshots taken using key shortcuts are typically saved on your desktop. However, if you tack the Control key onto either of these shortcuts, macOS will copy the captured image to the clipboard instead of saving it as a file on your desktop, which is useful if you want to paste it into an application that can edit or view images, or use Universal Clipboard to paste it on another Apple device.

Equally useful is the fact that, after you take the screenshot, you can click on the preview image (lower-right corner of the screen) to bring it into an editor. You can crop and draw-over the image before it is saved.

I frequently use this when posting screen shots to forums. I will cover personal information with a black rectangle and will draw colored rectangles around those UI elements to which I want to call attention.

These keystrokes have been around for 20+ years. Apple isn't suddenly make it harder just recently.

These keystrokes used to be the _only_ way to capture screenshots (natively), but they more recently added the Screenshot app, as discussed in this article, for those that struggle with keystrokes.

Yes. Old timers may find it interesting why the screen-shot keystrokes start with 3.

CMD-Shift-1 and CMD-Shift-2 used to be used to eject the floppy in drive 1 and drive 2, respectively. Which was really useful back in the day, to avoid needing to drag floppy icons to the trash.

As for why these keys, remember that the original Mac keyboards didn't have any function keys. And they didn't have a control key. With those keyboards, this was the most logical choice. And once released, there's really no good reason to change it 40 years later. Especially when the function keys all have pre-assigned functions for other things (screen brightness, launchpad, media controls, etc.)