At the end of 2018, I wrote about taking screenshots on the Mac, including the basic abilities to capture the whole screen, a selected portion, or a specific window. I also made brief reference to the then new Screenshot tool in macOS and some of its advanced still and video capture capabilities.

In addition to sharing some of the advanced capabilities of this tool, I’ll add a quick tip I just discovered two years hence.

Click the Thumbnail

When you take a screenshot on macOS Mojave (10.14) and later, a thumbnail appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen (except when sending the screenshot to the Clipboard). Click the thumbnail to access various editing and annotation tools.

Many of these are the same markup tools as you’ll find in Preview. One handy addition is the ability to hand off the image to your nearby iPhone or iPad and mark up the image using that device’s touchable tools. (Check out the button to the left of Done.)

Right-Click the Thumbnail

Alternatively, right-click the screenshot thumbnail upon capture for a number of immediate choices, including:

  • Choose a destination to save the screenshot or send it to the Clipboard for pasting elsewhere
  • Choose among several common applications to open the screenshot
  • Show the file in the Finder, useful if your screenshots don’t all save to the Desktop
  • Delete the screenshot because perhaps you made a mistake and don’t want it saved at all

Screen Recordings with Sound

As of macOS Catalina (10.15), when you take a screen recording using the built-in Screenshot tool, you can also capture audio using any available microphone or audio input source.

Press Shift+Command+5 to invoke the tool and choose one of the two screen recording choices (in the middle with a juxtaposed “record” icon). Then, click Options and choose a microphone. It might be convenient to have the resulting video opened directly in QuickTime Player for further editing.

This feature is a boon for folks who demo all kinds of on-screen activities and post them for others to learn — people like you who want to become more self-sufficient.

Set the Destination

By default, screenshots save to the Desktop. If you don’t want to clutter the Desktop with all your captures, power users might know that there’s a Terminal command that has long been the only way to change the default destination of a screenshot.

However, when you press Shift+Command+5 to get the full suite of screenshot tools, you’ll find a selection of Save to choices under the Options button. For stills, this includes Clipboard and Preview; for videos, QuickTime Player is a choice. You can also choose any other folder on your Mac.

Here’s the tip I just discovered last night: The destination folder or application you set here applies permanently for all screenshots taken with any of the shortcuts, until you make a new choice. For example, you can create a Screenshots folder on your Mac and have all of them save there after capture.

Finally, you can always force a screenshot to save to the Clipboard by adding the Control key to initial shortcut, but that can be a mouthful for your fingers. Instead, specify the Clipboard in Options and then you can save all screenshots in a series to the clipboard (even saved by your clipboard manager) and never have to hold Control again.

How are you making use of the Screenshot tool? Do you capture images on websites to save for later? Record snippets of Zoom meetings? Demonstrate a computing issue to your friendly neighborhood techie?

When you send screenshots by email, make sure to send a version large enough for your recipient to see. Mail lets you choose the size of attached images (Small, Medium, Large, or Actual Size) so you don’t necessarily overload their inbox.

However, while Medium may be sufficient for me to interpret the context of your question, Large is probably best. Small is likely to lose too much detail and make it difficult for me to get your meaning.