How to take screenshots from the command line on Mac OS X
In addition to the default screenshot shortcut keys provided by Mac OS X, the built-in screencapture command line utility allows for a variety of screenshot options:
Capture the screen to the clipboard:
screencapture -c
Capture a selection or window (press spacebar to switch):
screencapture -i ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Capture a window without its shadow (press spacebar after entering the command to enable Window Selection mode):
screencapture -io ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Capture the screen and open the image in a new Mail message:
screencapture -M ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Capture the screen and open the image in a Preview window:
screencapture -P ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Capture the screen and save the image in the specified format (valid values are pdf, jpg, tiff, etc.):
screencapture -t png ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Capture the screen after the specified amount of seconds have passed:
screencapture -T 10 ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
This option isn't available in Mac OS X 10.4.* (Tiger), on that version of OS X you should rather use the command line "sleep" utility:
sleep 10; screencapture ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Capture the screen without playing the camera shutter sound:
screencapture -x ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
You can see all the screencapture parameters by running:
man screencapture
Keep in mind that these parameters can be combined, so you could, for instance, take a timed screenshot without the camera shutter sound:
screencapture -T 10 -x ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
Do you like this? Share it:
