Taking screenshots on your Mac is an incredibly useful feature, allowing you to capture important information, save images, and share content with others. However, what do you do if you only need to capture a particular part of your screen? Thankfully, you don’t have to go through the hassle of cropping your full screenshot if you don’t want to.
There are several methods to select a specific area of your screen before taking a screenshot. In this article, we’ll go over the different options available to Mac users and explain how to crop screenshots on your Mac.
Selecting a Specific Area of Your Screen
If you only need to capture a particular part of your screen, you can select the area before taking a screenshot. This saves you the extra step of cropping the image after the fact. Here’s how to do it:
Press Shift + Command + 4 on your keyboard to change your cursor to a crosshair.
Click and drag the crosshair over the section of the screen you want to capture.
If you need to move your selection, press and hold the Spacebar while continuing to drag your mouse.
Release the mouse or trackpad button to capture the selected area.
Press Esc to cancel the screenshot-taking process if you change your mind.
Cropping Screenshots on Your Mac
If you’ve already taken a fullscreen screenshot or have one that was taken previously that you’ve since decided needs cropping, here’s what you do:
Open the screenshot in Preview by double-clicking on the file in the Finder.
Click, hold, and drag anywhere in the screenshot to create a selection box, which you can move and resize as needed until it surrounds the details you want to keep.
Select Tools, then Crop to crop the screenshot to your selection, deleting everything outside of the box you’ve made. Alternatively, press Command + K to crop using the keyboard shortcut.
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If you’ve just taken a screenshot, you can click on the preview that briefly pops up in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Then select the Pen icon toward the top-right of the window and choose the Crop tool out of the toolbar.
Saving Screenshots
By default, screenshots save to your Mac’s desktop. However, macOS 10.14 and later allow you to configure alternate saving locations for screenshots if desired. To do this, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screenshots.
Capturing screenshots is an essential task for Mac users, and knowing how to select and crop specific areas of your screen is an incredibly useful skill. Whether you’re sharing information with colleagues or saving images for future reference, these techniques will make the process of capturing and editing screenshots easier and more efficient.
