You can “print screen” on a Mac using a few simple keyboard shortcuts that capture the whole screen, a portion, or a specific window as an image file you can save or print later. Screenshots are usually saved to your Desktop by default on recent versions of macOS.

Basic full-screen screenshot

  • Press Command (⌘) + Shift + 3 to capture the entire screen.
  • macOS saves the screenshot as a PNG file on your Desktop with a name like “Screenshot [date] at [time].png”.
  • Open that file in Preview (double-click it), then press Command (⌘) + P or choose File → Print to physically print it.

Capture part of the screen

  • Press Command (⌘) + Shift + 4 to turn the cursor into crosshairs.
  • Click and drag to select the area you want, then release the mouse/trackpad to take the screenshot; it will save to your Desktop.
  • To copy instead of saving, press Command (⌘) + Shift + Control + 4 , then paste directly into chat, email, or a document with Command (⌘) + V.

Capture a specific window

  • Press Command (⌘) + Shift + 4 , then tap Spacebar once; the cursor changes to a camera icon.
  • Move the camera over the window you want (it will highlight), then click to capture just that window as a screenshot file.
  • This method includes a subtle drop shadow that looks polished in slides or documents.

Screenshot toolbar (more options)

  • Press Command (⌘) + Shift + 5 on newer macOS versions to open the on-screen screenshot toolbar.
  • From there you can choose: capture entire screen, selected window, selected portion, or even record the screen as a video.
  • The toolbar also lets you pick where screenshots are saved and whether to show a floating thumbnail for quick markup.

Touch Bar and quick edits

  • On MacBook Pro models with a Touch Bar, press Command (⌘) + Shift + 6 to capture the Touch Bar.
  • After taking a screenshot in recent macOS versions, a small thumbnail briefly appears in the corner; click it to quickly crop, annotate, or share before it’s saved.
  • This makes it easy to mark up screenshots with arrows or text before printing or sending them, which is very handy for tutorials or bug reports.

Bottom note: Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.