How To on Mac

How to crop a screenshot on Mac

Jul 11, 2023

Quick Guide: How to Crop a Screenshot on Your Mac

Screenshots are an effective way to share visual content from your screen, whether it's an interesting article, a graphic design, or a snippet of code. Often, we want to share only a portion of the screenshot, which requires cropping. Luckily, Mac offers a user-friendly way to take and crop screenshots. In this post, we'll guide you through the steps to crop a screenshot on your Mac.

Step 1: Take a Screenshot

Before we crop, let's take a screenshot:

  1. Press Shift + Command + 4. Your cursor will change into a crosshair.

  2. Click and drag the crosshair to select the area you want to capture.

  3. Release your mouse or trackpad to take the screenshot. The screenshot will be automatically saved on your desktop.

If you want to take a screenshot of the entire screen, you can press Shift + Command + 3. To capture a window or menu, press Shift + Command + 4, then press the Space bar, move the camera icon over the window or menu, then click.

Step 2: Open the Screenshot

Find the screenshot on your desktop (or wherever your screenshots are saved). It will have a name like “Screen Shot [date] at [time].png.” Double click the screenshot to open it with the Preview application, which comes built-in on all Macs.

Step 3: Crop the Screenshot

Once your screenshot is open in Preview:

  1. Click the Show Markup Toolbar button (the pen icon) in the toolbar at the top of the Preview window.

  2. Click, hold, and drag your mouse over the area of the screenshot you want to keep.

  3. Once you have the area selected, click the Crop button (the pair of overlapping corners icon) in the Markup Toolbar.

And that's it! Your screenshot will be cropped to the selected area.

Step 4: Save the Cropped Screenshot

After cropping the screenshot, remember to save the changes:

  1. Click on "File" in the menu bar.

  2. Select "Save" from the dropdown list.

Alternatively, you can simply press Command + S to save your changes.

Learning how to crop screenshots on your Mac allows you to share precise visuals and clean up any unnecessary content from your captures. Now, you're equipped with one more useful skill to enhance your Mac proficiency. Happy screenshotting and cropping!