The Best Mac Screenshot Settings to Change

macOS takes good screenshots and then does four irritating things with them: adds a huge shadow, drops them on your desktop, names them with a timestamp that is hard to read, and floats a preview in the corner for five seconds. All four are settings, and all four are reversible.

Kill the drop shadow

Press Command-Shift-4 then Space and click a window, and macOS captures it with a large soft shadow. That shadow adds roughly eighty transparent pixels on each side, which throws off alignment in any document and looks wrong on a coloured background.

# no shadow on window screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

# restore it
defaults delete com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow
killall SystemUIServer

You can also suppress the shadow for a single shot without changing anything: hold Option while you click the window.

Send them somewhere other than the desktop

Screenshots default to the desktop, which is how a desktop becomes unusable. Give them a folder:

# save screenshots to their own folder
mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

# back to the desktop
defaults delete com.apple.screencapture location
killall SystemUIServer

There is a menu route too: take any screenshot with Command-Shift-5, then use the Options menu in the toolbar to pick a save location. That toolbar also holds the timer and the option to remember your last selection.

Choose the right file format

PNG is the default and the right choice for anything with text or transparency. For photographs, or when you are sending twenty screenshots and the size matters, JPG is much smaller:

# jpg instead of png (also accepts pdf, tiff, heic)
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
killall SystemUIServer

# back to png
defaults delete com.apple.screencapture type
killall SystemUIServer

Keep PNG if you screenshot code, documents or interfaces. JPG compression makes small text fuzzy in a way that looks careless.

The thumbnail and the filename

The floating preview in the corner delays the file being written, which matters if you are taking shots in a sequence or pasting straight into another app. Turn it off:

# no floating thumbnail after a capture
defaults write com.apple.screencapture show-thumbnail -bool false

# drop the date and time from the filename
defaults write com.apple.screencapture include-date -bool false

killall SystemUIServer

Undo either with defaults delete. Removing the date gives you Screenshot.png, Screenshot 1.png and so on, which is easier to type and easier to sort by hand.

Name screenshots something useful

The prefix on every screenshot is a setting too. If you file a lot of them, or you share a folder with someone else's, changing it makes sorting far easier:

# call them Shot instead of Screenshot
defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "Shot"
killall SystemUIServer

# back to the default name
defaults delete com.apple.screencapture name
killall SystemUIServer

Combined with turning off the date, you get short predictable names that are easy to type in a terminal or drag in bulk. And if you want a proper timestamped archive instead, leave the date on and point the save location at a folder your backup already covers.

Recording, not just capturing

Command-Shift-5 also records the screen, and its Options menu has one setting worth turning on before any demo: Show Mouse Clicks. It draws a circle at every click, which is the difference between a recording people can follow and one where the pointer teleports. The same menu sets the microphone source and the save location for recordings.

Two shortcuts worth memorising

• Control with any screenshot shortcut copies to the clipboard instead of saving a file. Control-Command-Shift-4 is the fastest way to paste a region into a chat.
• Command-Shift-5 opens the full capture toolbar, including screen recording, a timer, and the option to show mouse clicks while recording.