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Tweak Screencapture Behavior

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Normally, we will use keystrokes Cmd-Shift-3 or Cmd-Shift-4 to take snapshot with Mac default screencapture utility. And new in Snow Leopard, we will end up having a PNG image file automatically stored inside our Desktop folder with the name Screen shot … .

Those behaviors mentioned above are the default ones. We can easily change those with simple command lines.

  1. Change Screencapture Filename
    defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "New Name"
    killall SystemUIServer     You can change the value "New Name" to the name of your liking. And if you put the name as empty string (i.e. ""), you will get your screencapture named with the format: [current date] at [time], e.g. "2009-10-20 at AM 03.02.57".
  2. Change Screencapture Location
    defaults write com.apple.screencapture location "New Location"
    killall SystemUIServer     Hint. You can drag-drop the folder to Terminal pane to get the folder location.
    As seen in both command lines, the second line killall SystemUIServer is needed and used to restart the screencapture application. Only after restarting, changes will take effect.
  3. Change Screencapture File Format
    defaults write com.apple.screencapture type [new format]
    killall SystemUIServer     These file formats are available: PNG, PDF, JPG, JP2, GIF, TIF, BMP, PICT, and TGA.
    Note. Replace the [new format] with one of those available formats, e.g. JPG.
  4. Disable Window Shadow
    When we used key combination [Cmd-Shift-4] + [Space], we will be able to capture a snapshot of window along with the shadow. The following command lines are used to disable the shadow. defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
    killall SystemUIServer     You can change -bool true to -bool false to enable back the shadow.
  5. Capture from Terminal Command
    One of these command lines can be used to capture from terminal: screencapture -c
    screencapture -i ~/Desktop/snapshot.png
    screencapture -io ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
    screencapture -M ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
    screencapture -P ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
    screencapture -t png ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
    screencapture -T 5 ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
    screencapture -x ~/Desktop/screenshot.png     The usages of each command line can be checked using: man screencapture

Personally, I love to play around with Terminal tweaks. If you have any other interesting tweaks, feel free to share with us; we provided a comment box for that. Have a good time screencapture-ing!

Categories: Tweak
Tags: Customize, ScreenCapture, Screencapture, Tweak

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5 Comments

rocky 

how do you change the automatic file name for photbooth it also stores it with a long name?

if that made any sense

Alec 

How much of this is actually specific to snow leopard? I have leopard and some (all?) seems to be working...

Tye Bergeson 

I am getting this error:
The attempt to take a screen capture has failed. The error is: 'Cannot write file to intended destination. Please make sure that the destination folder is writable.'

the folder is readable and writeable. At this point, I'd be happy to gain the normal functionality back. Any help would be appreciated. thanks

Tiffany Jones 

I can't get enough of this site! Thanks for all the great information!!

Darbo Scalante 

Hi Tye, this result is caused because you have copied and pasted the lines both together without an intro between them, well this was the fix i found.

write by first:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "New Name"

then, hit the intro key, then write:
killall SystemUIServer

and this has fixed the problem for me.

Greets!

Remember that "New Name" can be changed for "AnythingYouWant" I just don't know how many spaces you can use, i prefer to use the simple "Picture"

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