Can’t find Home, End, PageUp on Mac? Want to screenshots still have to open QQ? Don’t know how the Mac cuts files? Can’t find the button for a full-screen window? Can’t find the hidden folder? Don’t know how to delete backwards? Want to use less mouse and more keyboard? … I hope this series of posts has helped

An overview of the

First of all, I can’t and don’t intend to list all the shortcuts. The purpose of this blog post is to list some shortcuts that I use regularly and that I think have significantly improved my productivity. So it’s going to be somewhat subjective Anyway, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave a comment below

screenshots

Save the screenshot to the desktop

Cmd + Shift + 3 Captures the entire screen and saves the screenshot to the desktop

After activating the area screenshot, the mouse pointer will look like the image below, then hold and drag

Screenshot and copy

Touch Bar for the new MacBook

The Touch Bar has been added to the new MacBook, and the system also provides shortcuts to capture the Screen of the Touch Bar: Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 6 Intercept the content displayed in the Touch Bar and save it to the desktop

Some advanced operations

Capture window

One of the most common functions is to intercept a window. Instead of using the intercept area shortcut key and then dragging the entire window, just press space after Cmd + [Ctrl +] Shift + 4, and the mouse and window will look like this:

The mouse will change to the shape of the camera indicated by the red arrow, and the window to be captured will change to the color of the selected mode. Just click the mouse to capture the window directly. To cancel, press ESC. Similarly, a shortcut key with Ctrl will copy the screenshot of the window. If not, the window screenshot is saved to the desktop

Some people may ask why the “selected” mode above is so bright (nan) (kan) color, can be set here, the color is my own, not the system default:

Real time resizing

Screenshot of labeling

We just need to use the built-in Preview to annotate the screenshot

For screenshots saved to the desktop, we first click on the image on the desktop and then press space directly. The space bar is a Quick View for Mac, which we’ll cover in more detail in a future article. Then just click Open with Preview as shown in the arrow below:

Then click on the toolbox icon indicated by the arrow to make a note. MacOS provides us with the following annotation functions: Selection (circle, rectangle and lasso), brightness selection, brush, geometric annotation (circle, rectangle, arrow, etc.), text, signature, color palette and cropping:

I have to mention brightness selection, this feature can select background based on brightness intelligently. For example, in the screenshot above, click on the Brightness selection, then hold down the mouse and drag left or right (or up or down) to see how the selection area changes. After selecting the background, we reverse select (Cmd + Shift + I) and Delete directly to get this:

Time-lapse screenshot and Grab app

Grab

Sometimes we need to take delayed screenshots, and macOS has this feature for us, but it’s hidden deep. You can search for it using Spotlight from Alfred or macOS. Grab:

When you hit Enter and nothing opens, you might think you just opened a fake App. But in fact, the App itself does not have a UI, only a Menu is displayed on the Menu Bar. We can find the option for delayed screenshots here:

Click and follow the prompts. The default delay is 10 seconds. Note that a time-lapse screenshot captures the entire screen, not the area. We can save the image first, and then open Preview and crop the App

personalized

screencapture -T 10 screenshot1.jpg

Configure the screenshot function

Disable prompt tone

Shortcut Settings

There may be friends who think the system has shortcut keys good trouble, to be honest, get used to it for a few days. In principle, I don’t really recommend you to do it yourself, because if you don’t set the shortcut keys properly, it can cause shortcut key conflicts in some apps. For example, if you change the screenshot shortcut key to Ctrl + C, then congratulations, you can only kill ${pid} 😏. Of course, if you are familiar with the shortcut keys, there is no harm in changing them. If you mess up the shortcut keys, you can go back to the default

You can go to System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts to set the shortcut keys. First navigate to “Services” and then you can find the shortcut keys for setting screenshots:

Even if all of these are turned off, as shown above, all of the shortcuts mentioned above will work because they are the system’s default shortcuts. Also, we note that there are shortcuts for time-lapse screenshots. If you often use this feature, you can use a shortcut such as Cmd + Shift + 5 to make it easy to remember

The default path for saving snapshots is set

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/myScreenshot

killall SystemUiServer

Screenshot App Recommendation

I’m often asked how to make GIFs on the Mac and what screenshot apps are available instead of native screenshot tools. Here we recommend the following items, from free to paid. By the way, the Windows screenshots tool is handy, and PicPick is excellent. You can always try it for free, you don’t need to find a hack, but there is no Mac version of the App

System screenshot App replacement

Browser plugin Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is a free Screenshot utility that is not a native App and is just a browser plug-in. It supports common functions such as delay capture area capture. There is also a built-in annotation tool for the web

Skitch, which is owned by Evernote

Jing

Jing is also a free screenshot App from TechSmith, whose more powerful screenshot tool SnagIt is described below

Make the Gif

LICEcap (charge)

LICEcap is an old macOS Gif creation tool. It is not free. Compared with other apps, LICEcap itself does not provide sharing and uploading functions, so I do not recommend it very much

Giphy Capture (free)

SnagIt – Total solution

My general habit is to use system screenshots if they are just for pasting into a chat box or something and don’t need to be labeled. If you need to tag, or want to stay, you use a third-party App: SnagIt. Although it is a paid software and the price is a bit high, I think it is well worth buying. I currently use this for screenshots and GitHub

A screenshot

Editing features

As a paid App, it does give us more editing capabilities than macOS native Preview. Leaving aside the comparison of existing features like arrows, although I still think the elements in SnagIt look better, SnagIt also provides the ability to type codes. Magnifying glasses are also great for highlighting points. There is also Stamp, which has a vast selection of stamps, from PC keystrokes to emojis to mathematical symbols and cursive English letters, that can be thrown directly onto the screen shot. Although there is no direct jigsaw puzzle tool, it is not difficult to put together, cut the map, add the dividing line, paste it together

Video function

Upload and synchronize functions

TechSmith offers its own screencast.com and TechSmith Relay services, as well as the option to upload to Google Drive or Dropbox. You can also configure your own FTP, or just throw it into the iCloud folder. Also, you can select local folder to save, support naming rules and other Settings

trailer