Just head to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts. If you love the idea of saving a screenshot directly to the clipboard, but hate having to contort your fingers to reach the necessary keys, you can take advantage of the Mac’s excellent keyboard mapping function to create your own screenshot shortcuts. As a bonus, this method also keeps your desktop clutter-free! If you need to save your Mac screenshot to a file, of course, you can always forgo the Control key as necessary. The benefit of learning this approach is that you can more quickly take your screenshot into the correct application, saving you time, especially if you take lots of screenshots throughout the day. Pressing the Control key along with the other common shortcut keys is admittedly a bit awkward from a finger positioning standpoint, but we’ve found that it’s easy to adjust with a little bit of practice. While adjusting to this new shortcut, just remember to add the Control key to the mix. This clipboard trick also works with other screenshot types, including Selection ( Control (⌃) + Shift (⇧) + Command (⌘) + 4) and Window ( Control (⌃) + Shift (⇧) + Command (⌘) + 4 + Spacebar). But if you open an app which can accept a pasted image, such as Pages, and try to paste the contents of your clipboard ( Command + V), you’ll see your screenshot appear. However, if you use Control (⌃) + Shift (⇧) + Command (⌘) + 3, nothing will appear on your desktop and, well, nothing will seem to happen at all. Pressing that key combination will capture your entire screen and place the image as a new PNG file on your desktop. You simply take an existing screenshot keyboard shortcut and add Control to the mix.įor example, the keyboard shortcut to capture then entire screen is Shift (⇧) + Command (⌘) + 3. To save your Mac screenshot to the clipboard instead of to a file on your desktop, the magic key is Control (displayed on some older Mac keyboards as ⌃). Copying a Mac Screenshot to the Clipboard The good news is that this extra functionality is also built right into the Mac OS and uses a simple modification of the already familiar Mac screenshot shortcuts. In these cases, the creation of the screenshot file is simply an unnecessary step in the process of getting the screenshot to its ultimate destination.Ī solution to this middleman file is the Mac’s ability to save a captured screenshot to your clipboard, where it can be directly pasted into the desired application without needing to create and place the file on your desktop. Sometimes, however, you want to immediately use that screenshot in another application, such as editing it in Photoshop or sharing it via Mail. By default, using the Mac screenshot tools places the captured image on your desktop or in another user-defined directory. Mac OS X includes some very useful and powerful screenshot capabilities. Quick Tip: Copy Mac Screenshots Directly to the Clipboard

Mac screen capture short cut