March 9, 2008 Print Screen on Mac OS: Who Needs A Print Screen Key?

One would assume that there is no print screen function in OS X. Well, I got some news and it might be a shocker. OS X has more robust print screen functionality than Windows XP.

Just use any of the following commands to place a shiny new PDF on your desktop.

CMD + Shift + 3
This will take a screenshot of your entire screen.

CMD + Shift + 4
This will bring up a selection tool so you can make a rectangular screenshot of a certain area.

CMD + Shift + 4 + Space Bar
This will turn your cursor into a tiny camera. Use this camera to take a picture of the Dock, a menu, or a window and it will crop the background automatically for the resulting image.

Note: If you hold down the Control key during and of the above commands the image gets copied to your clipboard, ready to paste, rather than creating a PDF on your desktop