Set Up Screenshots Properly on a New M5 Mac

macOS takes good screenshots and then does four slightly annoying things with them: drops them on your Desktop, wraps window captures in fifty pixels of transparent shadow, saves everything as PNG, and floats a thumbnail in the corner that delays the file appearing. All four are one command each, and all four reverse.

1. Send them somewhere other than the Desktop

The default buries your Desktop under files named after the moment you took them. Point them at a real folder — and create the folder first, because the setting silently does nothing if the path does not exist.

# Save screenshots to a folder instead of the Desktop
mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

# Undo
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop
killall SystemUIServer

More detail in changing the screenshot location.

2. Drop the shadow from window captures

Press ⌘+⇧+4 then Space to capture a single window and macOS includes a large soft drop shadow. That is why your screenshots have transparent padding on every side and why they never line up in documentation.

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

# Undo
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false
killall SystemUIServer

3. Pick the right format

PNG is the default and the right choice for anything containing text, because it stays sharp. JPEG produces much smaller files and is worth it only if you capture a great deal and care about disk space. Think about what you actually screenshot before switching — for most people the answer is text, and PNG wins.

# Switch to JPEG
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -string "jpg"
killall SystemUIServer

# Back to PNG
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -string "png"
killall SystemUIServer

See screenshot formats for the full comparison.

4. Turn off the floating thumbnail

After each capture a thumbnail floats in the bottom corner for a few seconds, and the file is not written until it disappears or you dismiss it. Useful if you annotate immediately; irritating if you are taking twenty screenshots in a row and waiting for each one to land.

Turn it off in the screenshot toolbar itself: press ⌘+⇧+5, open Options, and uncheck Show Floating Thumbnail. Full detail in disabling the screenshot thumbnail.

Worth knowing

All four settings are per-user and survive restarts, but none of them survive a fresh install or a new Mac, which is why this is a setup task rather than something you do once in your life. Every command above has its undo printed next to it, so nothing here is a one-way door.