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Changing Screenshot Formats In OS X [Video How-To]
Mar 11, 2025
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type killall SystemUIServer
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0:10
hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how to change the default format for
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screenshots in Mac OS 10 so when you
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take a screenshot Mac OS 10 you can
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achieve this by holding down command and
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shift and tapping three and once you
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take your screenshot you're going to
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notice that if you right click on the
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screenshot and click get info the
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default format for the screenshot is a
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PNG file now pgs are fine and everything
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but the problem with them is that the
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file sizes are always extremely big so
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you can see here that this one
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screenshot of my desktop is 5.5
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megabytes which is pretty ridiculous in
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my opinion and I would much rather have
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a JPEG screenshot and those file sizes
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are a lot smaller now unfortunately the
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only way I found that works that lets
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you change the screenshot format is
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going through terminal I've tried some
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third party applications that they've
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never worked for me so unfortunately
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we're going to have to use terminal for
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this one uh but it'll be worth it if you
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want to decrease your file sizes if you
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take a lot of screenshots like I do so
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you're going to have to launch up
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terminal now an easy way to do this is
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to go into your applications folder in a
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new finder window and then scroll down
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to utilities and go into your utilities
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folder and from there you should find
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the application terminal so what you're
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going to have to do is type in this
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string of text that I'll vot show you
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and that sh enough text will be right
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below the video if you just want to copy
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and paste it so what you're going have
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to write is
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default space right
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space. apple. screen
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capture space and then type space then
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here's where you're going to want to
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enter your screen capture format in this
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case I want to make it a JPEG so I'm
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going to type jpg and then I'm going to
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hit enter and then you'll just see the
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prompt again so after that you want to
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type kill all as one word and then
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system with capital S and then without a
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space UI both capital and then no space
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again server with a capital S then hit
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enter and looks like I just spelled it
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wrong there so let's try that
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again so now when I go back and take a
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screenshot I'm going to hold on command
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and shift and hit three now when I right
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click on this and hit get info you can
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see that the screenshot is now only 848
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Koby which is quite a bit smaller and a
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lot more manageable in my opinion now
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the nice thing about this is you can use
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other formats other than a JPEG as well
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for example I can type in the exact same
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thing but instead of jpg for the type
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I'm going to type
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PDF and I'm going to kill all system UI
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server
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again and then now if I take a
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screenshot
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you can see if I hit get info the
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screenshot is a PDF now of course this
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PDF is rather large it's 7.6 megabytes
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uh but if you want a PDF for some reason
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uh there you go and now you have a PDF
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screenshot so that's kind of interesting
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now this works with not only jpegs and
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PDFs but pretty much every other image
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format that you'd want to save it as as
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well now last but not least if you don't
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want to use the default PNG format and
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you don't want to work with terminal if
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you go and open a finder window and go
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into your applications folder utilities
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once again and you open up grab which is
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a screen capture utility that vable with
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OS 10 and you go to the capture menu and
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we'll just click window for this one and
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uh I'll just choose this finder window
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now this screenshot format if I go up to
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the file menu and click save you can see
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that the default format is Tif a tiff
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file now if you try to change the format
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of this I go jpg I click save it's going
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to give me an error or a warning rather
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and I have to use that Tiff so if you
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want to save your files as that format
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using grab is probably the easiest way
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to go so that's how you can change your
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default screenshot format type in Mac OS
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10 now if you have anything you'd like
4:17
to see me a video how two on make sure
4:19
to send me an email this video is
4:20
actually suggested by a reader as a
4:22
matter of fact I hope you found this
4:24
video useful and thank you for watching
4:30
sh
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