Take a screenshot with a Mac

Although it may still be mysterious to some, most of you out there using a PC will know about that ‘Print Screen’ button near the top right of your keyboard. This can be used to take a screenshot, which is an image of exactly what is displayed on your screen at the time and copied to your clipboard.

The screenshot can be a handy function, but for those Apple Mac users out there, there is no single magical button for this purpose. It can still be done, there’s just a bit more to it – here’s how.

To take a shot of the whole screen, press ‘Command’, ‘Shift’ and ‘3’ at the same time. You can also capture just a certain area of the screen by pressing ‘Command’, ‘Shift’ and ‘4’ at the same time. Use the cursor to select the specific area of the screen you’d like to capture. Try it out to see for yourself.

These shortcuts will create an image file on your desktop. However, in both cases if you hold down the ‘Control’ key also this will copy the screenshot to the clipboard instead.