Quick Tip: How to print screen on a Mac

Making the move from a Windows PC to an Apple Mac can be quite a change – there’s different keyboard symbols and shortcuts and some features even appear to be missing. One such feature that doesn’t appear to be on a Mac keyboard is the trusty Print Screen. It’s nice and easy to find on a Windows keyboard, but where is it on a Macbook? Don’t worry, The Gadget Helpline is here to show you how to print screen on your Mac.

With Mac and Macbook there is not one but two ways of print screening, the second of which is rather handy and saves cropping after your print screen! More on that later, firstly we’ll show you the basic full print screen.

Firstly get yourself onto the screen you want to print screen. Next, press and hold these three buttons together then let go after 2 seconds: cmd ⌘ + Shift + 3. This will instantly send a screenshot file to your desktop, making a distinct camera shutter sound in the process to let you know it worked. There you have it!

With the Mac operating system you can even screenshot a selection of your screen, thus saving you the effort of print screening then cropping in a photo editor. To achieve this press together cmd + Shift + 4. Once you’ve pressed these buttons together and let go, you should see that your cursor has changed to a crosshair. Move this to the top left corner of the area you want to select then click and drag the mouse over an area of screen. Let go of the click to finish your print screen and again you’ll hear the shutter sound. Your print screen will now appear as an image file on your desktop!

A handy tip to learn if you’re a beginner Mac user, we’re sure you’ll agree. We’ll be doing more quick tips in the future so feel free to suggest some to us on our Twitter Page. You’ll find it here.