To take a screenshot on a Mac, press ⌘⇧3 to capture the whole screen, ⌘⇧4 and drag to capture part of it, or ⌘⇧4 then Space and click to capture one window. ⌘⇧5 opens the Screenshot toolbar, with the same three options plus a timer and a choice of where to save. Screenshots save to your desktop by default; add ⌃ to any of those shortcuts (for example ⌃⇧⌘4) to copy the screenshot to the clipboard instead of saving a file. For the jobs macOS doesn’t do (scrolling pages, freezing the screen to catch a menu, copying text off the screen, scanning a QR code) a screenshot app like hypershot adds its own shortcuts, listed below.
The built-in way
Whole screen: ⌘⇧3. Press the three keys together and release. With more than one display, you get one file per display.
Part of the screen: ⌘⇧4. The pointer becomes a crosshair; drag over the area and let go. Hold Space while dragging to move the selection without resizing it, and press Esc to cancel.
One window: ⌘⇧4, then Space. The pointer becomes a camera. Click the window (or an open menu) to capture it. macOS includes the window’s drop shadow; hold ⌥ while you click to leave it out. There’s more on that in How to take a screenshot of a window without the shadow on Mac.
The Screenshot toolbar: ⌘⇧5. A small bar with buttons for the entire screen, a window, or a selected portion, plus screen recording. Its Options menu is where the useful settings live:
- Save to — the desktop, another folder, the clipboard, or an app such as Mail or Preview.
- Timer — 5 or 10 seconds before the shot fires.
- Show Floating Thumbnail and Show Mouse Pointer.
- On supported Macs running macOS 26 Tahoe or later, SDR (PNG) or HDR (HEIF) capture.
The same toolbar is also the Screenshot app, in Applications → Utilities.
The floating thumbnail. After a capture, a thumbnail sits in the bottom-right corner for a few seconds. Click it to mark up the screenshot, drag it into another app, or swipe it away to save straight away. If you leave it alone, it saves where your Save to option points.
All of this is fast, free and dependable. Its gaps are specific: no scrolling capture, no way to freeze the screen while you aim, a timer with two settings, and a screenshot is a flat image the moment it’s taken.
With hypershot
hypershot’s defaults deliberately avoid the system shortcuts, so both sets work side by side. Each capture drops into a preview folder in the corner of the screen, where you can edit, copy, drag or save it.
- Region: ⌘⇧2. Drag and release. Hold the mouse button and it keeps recording a short burst of frames, so you can scrub back to the moment you meant.
- Window: ⌘⇧W. Hover and click, even on a window behind another one. See How to capture a single window.
- Screen: ⌘⇧1. The display your pointer is on.
- Frozen: ⌘⇧X opens the selection with the screen already frozen, or press Space mid-selection. Menus and tooltips stay put while you aim.
- Scrolling: ⌘⇧J. Select the part that scrolls, scroll, click Done. See How to take a scrolling screenshot on Mac.
- Delayed: ⌘⇧7 for a region, ⌘⇧8 for the screen, ⌘⇧9 for a window. Anywhere from 1 to 30 seconds, set in Settings → Captures.
- Text (OCR): ⌘⇧O. Drag over text and it’s on your clipboard, recognised on your Mac by Apple’s Vision framework.
- QR codes and barcodes: ⌘⇧B. The screen freezes and every code on it is decoded, each with a Copy button.
Every capture is saved as an editable .hypercapture in Pictures/hypershot, so annotations stay editable later. For clipboard-only, set Settings → Captures → After capture to Only Copy. All of these can be remapped in Settings → Shortcuts, including to ⌘⇧4 itself if you’d rather hypershot answer the keys you already know (that needs Accessibility permission).
Side by side
| Job | macOS | hypershot |
|---|---|---|
| Whole screen | ⌘⇧3 (every display) | ⌘⇧1 (display under the pointer) |
| Part of the screen | ⌘⇧4, drag | ⌘⇧2, drag |
| One window | ⌘⇧4, Space, click | ⌘⇧W, click |
| Freeze the screen first | Not built in | ⌘⇧X |
| Scrolling page | Not built in | ⌘⇧J |
| Timer | ⌘⇧5 → Options: 5 or 10 s | 1–30 s |
| Copy text off the screen | Live Text, after opening the image | ⌘⇧O |
| Scan a QR code | Not in the screenshot tools | ⌘⇧B |
| Clipboard only | Add ⌃ | After capture → Only Copy |
| Screen recording | ⌘⇧5 | Coming soon |
Where do Mac screenshots go?
To the desktop, unless you changed Save to in the ⌘⇧5 Options menu. hypershot’s go to Pictures/hypershot; Where do my screenshots go? covers the details.
Can I change the Mac screenshot shortcuts?
Yes, in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Screenshots. Turning one off there also frees it for hypershot.