How To Take and Mark Up a Screenshot On a Mac

Taking a screenshot on your Mac is easy, and if you want to annotate it with arrows, shapes, text and other indicators you can do it right after taking the screenshot or later in Mail or Preview.

Comments: 15 Responses to “How To Take and Mark Up a Screenshot On a Mac”

    Bob Fox
    2 years ago

    Excellent presentation.

    What about highlighting certain lines or areas of the screenshot? We were not able to do this. My brother uses the windows snipping program but wants to do something like that on a iMac

    2 years ago

    Bob: Use the tools: circles, rectangles, arrows, text, etc, too highlight what you want. A screenshot is an image, so you can't select and highlight text in it (those are just pixels like everything else).

    Eduardo Rodriguez Avila
    2 years ago

    Hello! I recently found out about this screenshot utility (not sure since when it exists in macOS). Quite useful. I already knew the keyboard shortcuts to capture the whole screen or just a part of it from several years ago, but this utility gives you a lot of help. I think it is much, much better than the equivalent snipping tool in Windows. Your video gives me a lot of understanding on this. Thanks a lot!

    sury
    2 years ago

    Great Gary. Thank you very much.
    I didn't know so much was possible with just screen shot.

    John
    2 years ago

    I have screen capture set to go to preview, but more than half the time, preview opens as it should, but I get a file open dialog box, as if I’m opening an existing document. sometimes it works correctly, no file open dialog box, just the screen capture, in preview just like it’s supposed to. any ideas on the cause of this behavior? have you ever seen this happen?

    JD

    2 years ago

    John: Perhaps you already had Preview running, with the File Open dialog showing, but the whole app hidden or behind other windows.

    Razvan Mihai
    2 years ago

    Gary & Bob: You can continue annotating a screenshot saved to the Note app on iPhone or iPad. You can there use the ruler and color of your liking to highlight what you want. Syncing over iCloud may sometimes result in some delays, though. Not sure how to speed up the sync process. Any thoughts?

    Rick Grossman
    2 years ago

    Good information here I didn't know I could add text to any shape.
    1 Is there a way for the Markup Toolbar to be open by default when I open Preview?
    2 Can Preview be used to combine two images?
    3 I often use Markup to hide confidential information before sending the screen shot as a jpg. Can a recipient uncover what I've covered?

    2 years ago

    Rick: No, you'll need to click the button to open the tool. Preview can be used to combine images, but that depends on your definition -- what are you actually trying to do? You can copy part of one image and paste it into another. If you cover a part of an image with a box and save it out, the original pixels are gone, no way to see them.

    Bert Mullemeister
    2 years ago

    Hi Gary, thanks for this video. I was able to change my locked screen on my iPhone to include a message If Found please ring xxxx (my wife)
    This may be helpful to other users

    Jeanne Bragg
    2 years ago

    It was very helpful to show how to save to "Preview.."
    Eliminates a step.
    I do find it difficult to locate prior screenshots when you take more than one.
    Besides naming them, any hints?

    2 years ago

    Jeanne: Just a matter of naming them and putting them in a logical place in your file organization. Whatever works for you.

    Peter Knight
    2 years ago

    Gary,
    Thanks for a great tutorial.
    You seem to a few more annotation tools available to you. For instance, I do not appear to have the free form drawing tool. Is this an OS version issue? I am running Catalina on my late 2013 iMac.

    2 years ago

    Peter: Some may be missing because you are using an old version of macOS. Also keep in mind that the markup tools are different depending on whether you are making up an image or a PDF.

    George Chung
    2 years ago

    OMG, the markup functionality is so awesome. Before I learned this I was pasting the screenshot into PowerPoint to markup.

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