Taking screenshots is the most effective way to do step-by-step tutorials, facilitate troubleshooting, or simply document what you have on your screen. There are many ways to take screenshots on Mac, depending on how much and which part of the screen you want to capture.
Here are the shortcuts to take screenshots on a Mac:
- Press Command + Shift + 3 to capture the entire screen.
- Hold Shift + Command + 4, then press the space bar to capture a window.
- Press Shift + Command + 4 to capture a selected area of the screen.
MacOS Sierra (10.12) MacRumors attracts a broad audience of both consumers and professionals interested in the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.
The screenshots are automatically saved to the Desktop or to your specified destination folder. You can also choose to copy it to the clipboard and directly paste it to other applications, such as Microsoft Word, Google documents, email, Notes, and more.
However, some Mac users reported encountering blank screenshots in High Sierra recently. The problem occurred whenever they tried to capture their screen using the different shortcuts. Some users even tried using the Take Screenshot feature of Preview, but the images turned out to be blank. They heard the camera shutter sound, which meant that the screenshot was taken, but the screenshots still turned out to be white or gray blank images.
This problem has caused a lot of inconvenience to the affected users. Although most of the reported issues happened on macOS High Sierra, it is possible that the problem affects other macOS versions as well.
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- Check Keyboard Settings. The first thing you need to do is to check whether the screenshot.
The issue of blank screenshot in High Sierra can be caused by different factors, including:
- A corrupted .plist file
- Incorrect keyboard settings
- Malware infection
- Incompatibility issue with third-party apps or processes
If screenshot in High Sierra is not working, you can follow the steps outlined below to resolve this issue and get this feature working properly again.
What to Do If Screenshots Turn Up Blank in High Sierra
It can be annoying getting blank screenshots in High Sierra, especially if the moment you want to capture is difficult or impossible to recreate, such as the results of your online game that you want to brag about or an error that you need to document.
There are several ways to fix this issue, depending on the cause. But before you do anything else, close all running applications, delete junk files using Outbyte MacRepair, and reboot your Mac to refresh the system. If your problem is caused by a temporary glitch, restarting the system should easily fix this. Try your luck and see if screenshot is now working. If not, proceed with the steps below.
Step 1: Check Keyboard Settings.
The first thing you need to do is to check whether the screenshot shortcuts are enabled on your keyboard. To do this:
- Open the Apple Menu and choose System Preferences.
- Click Keyboard, then click on the Shortcuts tab.
- Choose Screen Shots from the left menu, then make sure all these options are ticked off:
- Save picture of screen as a file
- Copy picture of screen to the clipboard
- Save picture of selected area as a file
- Copy picture of selected area to the clipboard
You can also see the corresponding shortcuts for each type of screenshot.
If everything looks good, proceed to the next step.
Step 2: Reset Screenshot Settings.
Over time, your screenshot settings can get corrupted due to various reasons. The easiest way to reset this is by deleting the .plist file associated with this feature. To do this:
- Click Go in the Finder Menu.
- Choose Go to folder.
- Type in this address in the dialog box: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist.
- Move the .plist file to the Trash, then empty it.
Deleting the screencapture .plist file should reset the preferences for this feature to their default settings. Try doing a screenshot again and check if the image is now okay.
Step 3: Boot Into Safe Mode.
If resetting the system preferences did not work, try booting into Safe Mode. To boot into Safe Mode, restart your Mac then immediately press the Shift button when you hear the startup sound. Release the Shift button once the login window appears. You should now be running macOS in Safe Mode.
While in Safe Mode, try doing a screenshot. If the screenshot image looks fine, then a third-party app might be interfering with the screen capture process. What you need to do is find out which app is causing the problem.
Delete the apps that you don’t need or use to narrow down your options. Uninstall all recently installed apps, particularly those you installed around the time the screen capture feature went wonky.
Once you’ve figured out the culprit, uninstall the app then re-install a fresh copy. Check if doing this gets the screenshot problem fixed.
Step 4: Use Terminal to Capture a Screenshot.
If you’re still getting a blank screenshot in High Sierra, you can try running commands to do a screen capture. Launch Terminal from the Utilities folder and enter the command that corresponds to the type of screenshot you want to make:
- screencapture -iW ~/Desktop/screen.jpg (if you want to capture an active window)
- screencapture -c (if you want to capture the whole screen)
You should hear a camera shutter sound to confirm that the screenshot was taken. Check if the image captured from this method looks okay. If not, you can use other methods of taking screenshots discussed below.
Step 5: Use Preview to Take a Screenshot.
Preview is the macOS built-in app that allows users to open and edit images. You can also use this tool to take a screen capture using the toolbox icon.
To use Preview as a screenshot tool, follow the steps below.
- Open any image using Preview.
- Click File from the top menu, then choose Take Screenshot.
- Choose from the three options:
- From Selection
- From Window
- From Entire Screen
Check the screenshots taken if they look good.
Step 6: Use Third-Party Apps to Take Screenshots.
If you can’t use macOS built-in tools to take screenshots, you can use third-party apps instead. There are a lot of screenshot apps for macOS that provide different ways to capture screens. Aside from installing stand-alone apps for screen capture purposes, you can also use browser extensions to take shots of webpages.
Summary
Screenshots are highly useful for making step-by-step tutorials or for sharing something on your screen. Recent reports of blank screenshots in High Sierra have caused inconvenience to several users, making screen capture almost impossible. Following this guide should be able to help the affected users fix their faulty screen capture tool.
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If you can’t explain something clearly, you can crop a screenshot on Mac instead. A picture is more than a thousand word. For instance, you can send your friend or family of how to use a new software, service or something else on your Mac computer. Sometimes you need to draw on the screenshot to strengthen the key point directly.
There is a built-in snip tool on Mac named Grab. You can use Grab to crop a screenshot of custom screen and window. In macOS Mojave, the Grab app is replaced with Screenshot. As for macOS Catalina, Grab is not included. You need to bring it up with Shift, Command and 5 keys. Or you can crop Mac screenshots via keyboard shortcuts.
Whatever, let’s see how to screenshot on Mac in 3 different ways.
Part 1: How to Crop and Edit a Screenshot on Mac
It is helpful if you add draws on a screenshot. Others can understand what you want to express quickly and directly. Microsoft office for mac 2014 free. download full version. To full control Mac screenshots, it is recommended to use Vidmore Screen Recorder. You can use Vidmore Screen Recorder free version to take screenshots with real-time drawing effects on Mac. The program is completely free to crop, edit, share and manage screenshots on Mac. Here’re the main features of the Mac screenshot capture software.
- Crop a screenshot on Mac of the whole screen, a single window or any selected area.
- Edit a screenshot on Mac with text, arrow, line, blur, callout and other shapes in any size and color.
- Save a screenshot on Mac as PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF or TIFF.
- Share a screenshot on Mac to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Flickr, etc.
- 100% free to take screenshots on Mac. No registration or user account required. No watermark.
- Work with Mac OS X 10.10 or above.
Step 1: Free download, install and launch Vidmore Screen Recorder. Choose Screen Capture in the main interface.
Step 2: You can see the cursor move in the pop up window. If you want to crop a screenshot on Mac of the certain browser, program or entire screen, you can left click the mouse to confirm. Or you can click and drag your mouse to set the certain screenshot capture area.
Step 3: To edit the Mac screenshot, you can choose any drawing tool in the small window. For instance, you can click on the Callout icon to access it. Set the size and color based on your need. Now you can draw on the screenshot image directly.
Step 4: You can erase, undo or redo any change on the Mac screenshot. If you want to copy the Mac screenshot to clipboard, you can click the Copy button directly. It is also supported to pin the screenshot to screen. Or you can click Save to save a screenshot on Mac. In the popping-up Save as window, you can set the destination folder, tags, file name and format. Finally, click Save to export your Mac snapshot.
You may need: How to add watermark to video
Part 2: How to Crop a Screenshot on Mac with Grab
For average Mac users, you can use Grab to screenshot images on Mac. In spite of common Mac screenshots, you can take a time-delayed screenshot on Mac using Grab as well. If you are using macOS Catalina, you need to find it by pressing Command, Shift and 5 key combinations.
Step 1: Open Grab in the Launchpad. Or you can find it in the Applications folder as well.
Step 2: You can see Grab’s menu bar on the Dock.
Step 3: Choose Selection, Window, Screen or Timed Screen to crop an image on Mac with Grab.
Step 4: From the File drop-down list, choose Save to export your Mac screen capture image as JPEG, PNG or TIFF.
Mac Screen Capture High Sierra
Part 3: How to Crop a Screenshot on Mac with Keyboard Commands
If you want to capture any portion of the screen on your Mac computer immediately, you can use the Mac screenshot keyboard commands. The captured screenshot will be saved to desktop automatically. If you want to crop a screenshot to clipboard on Mac, you can press Control with other fixed combinations. After that, you can edit the screenshot thumbnails with other photo editors. (Edit video with video editors)
Crop a screenshot on Mac of full screen:
Step 1: Press Shift, Command and 3.
Step 2: Click the thumbnail to in the corner to edit the screenshot.
Step 3: The Mac screenshot will show on the desktop automatically.
Crop a screenshot on Mac of any portion:
Step 1: Press Shift, Command and 4.
Screen Capture Mac Os High Sierra
Step 2: Drag the crosshair and set the screen capture area.
Step 3: Release the mouse or trackpad to crop a screenshot on Mac.
Step 4: The screenshot will be saved to Mac desktop.
Crop a screenshot on Mac of a window or menu:
Step 1: Press Shift, Command, 4 and Space bar.
Step 2: Hover your mouse over the window or menu you want to capture.
Step 3: Click to crop a screenshot on macOS Catalina.
Step 4: You can press Option to exclude window shadow from the screenshot image.
Step 5: The Mac screenshot picture will show on the desktop quickly.
Part 4: FAQs of Cropping a Screenshot on Mac
Why Screenshot on Mac not working?
If you crop a screenshot on Apple TV and other related Apple programs, you are not allowed to use the built-in screenshot shortcuts and programs. The Chrome Incognito mode will stop you from cropping screenshots on Mac as well. During this time, you can run Vidmore Screen Recorder to crop a photo on Mac instead.
What to do when Screenshot on Mac not responding?
You can restart Mac or use alternative screen capture software to solve the problem.
Unable to delete screenshots on Mac?
Dragging and dropping to the Trash is the common solution to delete Mac screenshots. If the screenshot image is stuck, you can press Option, Command and Escape to force quit it first.
That’s all to crop a screenshot on Mac of all versions. Can you screenshot on your Mac computer successfully? If you have any question or suggestion about Mac screenshot, you can feel free to contact us.