Saturday, August 11, 2012

Long Term Solution for your Mac Desktop Screenshot Clutter

[Mips #3]

Now I know you love taking screenshots on your Mac, the fact that its so easy, you start by taking important screenshots then you slowly develop a habit of taking any screen that interests you that you might not even use in aeons until you've stuffed enough files on your Chimpanzee desktop wallpaper and feel like vomiting when you look at it, then you start organizing the screenshots manually in your folders and because you absolutely love taking useless screenshots, you end up getting fed up having to organize them periodically.

See also: 6 Different Screenshot Shortcuts on Mac


Here's a long term solution for Mac Screenshot Lovers, get your Mac to automatically save the screenshots in a separate folder.

STEP 0
Create a new folder that you'd like the screenshots to save in. You don't have to do this if you want the screenshots to save in an existing folder. Make sure the folder name has no space in it, if not it won't work. In this case, I created a folder on my desktop and renamed it to 'screenshot'.


STEP 1
Go to Spotlight on the top corner of your screen and type 'terminal' then open the application.


STEP 2
Type the command below in Terminal and press enter to execute. You have to change the username and foldername in the command below according to your Mac(highlighted in green below). Once again, make sure your folder name has no space in it or else it won't work.

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/username/desktop/foldername

Note: resh = Mac username & screenshots = specified folder on desktop

STEP 3
Now, type and execute the command below in Terminal
killall SystemUIServer


Close the Terminal application and you're done! Screenshots taken now will save in the specified folder!

6 Different Screenshot Shortcuts on Mac


[Mips #2]

The screenshot features on Mac are one of the many reasons I like the Mac. It's easy & convenient, I'm sharing 6 shortcut keys, you don't really need to remember all of them, just learn the first 2 if you're a casual user.
MAC SCREENSHOTS SAVED ON DESKTOP
1.Command + Shift + 3
To take the whole screen
2.Command + Shift + 4
To take a specific part of the screen. A cross icon will appear. Click and drag across the region you'd like to capture and it'll save on your desktop once you let go.

see also: Long Term Solution for your Mac Desktop Screenshot Clutter
3.Command + Shift + 4, and then press Space bar
And click on a specific element of screen as a window, Dock, menu, icon etc. It’ll capture that specific element's screen and save on your desktop. 
MAC SCREENSHOTS SAVED ON CLIPBOARD
The following is useful when you intend to use the screenshot for a report or design, by saving it on the clipboard you can easily paste the screenshot afterwards by pressing Command + v(Paste) on the desired window, be it, Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop etc.
4.Command + Control + Shift + 3
Takes the whole screen and saves on clipboard
5.Command + Control + Shift + 4
To take a specific part of the screen. A cross icon will appear. Click and drag across the region you'd like to capture and it'll save on your clipboard once you let go.
6.Command + Control + Shift + 4, and then press Space bar
And click on specific element of screen as a window, Dock, menu, icon etc. It’ll capture that element’s screen and save on your clipboard