Remove the Screenshot Shadow on Mac Permanently

Holding Option to drop the shadow on a window screenshot works, but it's a per-capture habit — and the one time you forget, you're back to a padded, shadowed image you have to redo. If clean edges are your standard, don't rely on remembering a modifier. Flip the shadow off permanently with a single setting and every window capture comes out tight, no keys held.

Per-capture vs permanent

macOS gives you two ways to get a shadowless window shot, and they solve different problems:

• Hold Option while clicking (in Shift+Cmd+4 → Space window mode) removes the shadow for that one capture. Great for a rare exception, useless as a default because you have to remember it every single time.
• Set disable-shadow removes it for all future window captures until you change it back. Set once, forget forever.

If you find yourself reaching for Option on most shots, that's the signal to make it permanent — you're fighting the default when you should just change it.

Turn the shadow off for good

Two lines, and it's done:

# Make every window screenshot shadowless, permanently
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

The setting is written to your screenshot preferences and survives logout and restart, so it's genuinely permanent — not a per-session tweak. killall SystemUIServer restarts the capture service so it applies immediately, and every window shot from now on is clean without touching Option.

Changing your mind later

"Permanent" just means it sticks until you say otherwise. To bring the classic shadow back at any point:

# Restore the default drop shadow
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false
killall SystemUIServer

With the shadow off system-wide, holding Option simply has no extra effect — the capture is already shadowless — so there's no conflict between the two methods. Everything here behaves identically on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Undo any defaults tweak with confidence

Making changes with defaults write is only comfortable when you know how to reverse them. If you want the full picture on rolling these back cleanly, see how to undo a defaults write command on Mac.