Showing someone else what's on your screen can be just as important as being able to see it yourself. So whether you're new to Macs or are an old veteran who just never picked up the skill, here's how to take a screen shot.
The screen capture that macOS comes with are both fairly simple to use and surprisingly versatile. There are three main options you can choose from: a screen capture of your entire desktop, a cropped image of any given area, or an automatic screen grab of an individual window or menu.
If you just want to capture your entire screen—and all monitors if you have more than one—all you have to do is hold down the Shift key, the Command (or ⌘) key, and the "3" key at the same time. You'll hear a shutter sound when the shot is taken, and macOS automatically saves the image as a .PNG file on your desktop. Look for a filename starting with "Screen Shot" followed by the date and time you captured the image. Those files can be a bit on the large size, especially a capture of an entire high-resolution desktop, so you may want to resize and/or convert them to a JPEG file before emailing or sharing them online. If you want to copy the image to the clipboard for use in another image editing application instead of saving it separately, just add Control into the keypress combination.
To capture just a portion of your screen, you hold down the Shift, Command, and "4" key at the same time instead. Your mouse cursor will then turn into a crosshair that you can use to select an area of any size. Just click and drag the mouse cursor to select the area, and let go to take the screen shot. If you want to have a second try at selecting an area before saving the image, you can press the Esc key or right click to start over.
There's also some little known features that let you fine-tune your selection space. You can hold the Shift key while selecting an area to lock in the height or width of the selection box, hold the Option key to expand the selection area proportionally instead of following the cursor, or press the Space bar after you've selected an area to reposition the selection box before saving an image.
To capture an image of an individual window (like your web browser), press Shift, Command and "4" as before, but then press the Space bar before selecting an area. Your cursor will then change to a camera icon that you can position over the window or menu you want to capture -- just click on it take the screenshot. Taking a screenshot this way also gives you a drop shadow effect on the resulting image.
That will cover most of your needs, but you may have noticed that none of these screen shots will actually include your cursor in the mix. Fortunately there's a way to do this too. To capture an image with your pointer in it, press Command and Space to open Spotlight Search and type in "Grab" to find and open the screen shot application. Then press Shift, Command, and Z to start a Timed Grab. Click "Start Timer" on the dialog box and then wait. After a few seconds, the computer will take a screen shot that includes your cursor and present it to you in a window, at which point you can save it.
The functionality that comes with your Mac is good for basic screen-grabbing, but if you want to markup your screen shots, share them easily, or record video, you'll have to check out some third-party applications.
Lightshot Screenshot or Skitch give you a range of annotation tools that let you add things like text, arrows, or rough drawings to your screenshots, as well as the ability to easily upload and share the resulting images.
CloudApp is another option that does all of those things as well but adds the ability to capture a recording of your screen (or an area of it), which can then be shared as a video or an animated GIF. Additional features like password protection and increased storage are also available for a monthly fee.
If GIFs are your primary concern, though, Giphy Capture is a simple application for creating those and nothing else.
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