Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

sal.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 332 posts

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#121

Post by behnamoh »

giantrobot wrote: post #92
susam wrote: post #45

Here is a key sequence I use very often. It takes a screenshot of a chosen window without the window's shadow. - First, type command + shift + 4 (the mouse pointer turns into crosshair). - Then type the space bar (the crosshair turns into a camera icon). - Hover the mouse pointer (a camera icon now), to highlight the chosen window. - Finally, hold the option key and click. This sounds like a lot of steps but it becom…

Add in the control key in the shortcut above and the screenshot will go to the clipboard instead of a file. Useful for pasting a screenshot into something like Messages or Slack. Also there's no need to hold down Option when clicking. You can however hit Esc to cancel the screenshot action.

Dang, these little tricks are so useful!

Combination of CTRL+OPTION works too.

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#122

Post by behnamoh »

hoten wrote: post #56
susam wrote: post #45

Here is a key sequence I use very often. It takes a screenshot of a chosen window without the window's shadow. - First, type command + shift + 4 (the mouse pointer turns into crosshair). - Then type the space bar (the crosshair turns into a camera icon). - Hover the mouse pointer (a camera icon now), to highlight the chosen window. - Finally, hold the option key and click. This sounds like a lot of steps but it becom…

FYI, Cmd + Shift + 5 encapsulates all the various options into one UI.

Yeah but it's nice to just press keys instead of point and click with CMD-SHIFT-5 options.

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#123

Post by nsonha »

hbn wrote: post #99
nsonha wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you not familiar with the concept of onboarding? Many websites and apps have this tour thing that highlight things that user haven't used, when appropriate.

The Mac does have onboarding, and it covers the basics. If it got into every single feature that someone calls "unintuitive," the onboarding would be 27 hours long

> 27 hours

is it in the form of non interactive animation? Yikes. If not, there is no problem with 27h, you just don't be ridiculous to do it all at once, instead of contextually.

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#124

Post by gkop »

dylan604 wrote: post #68
gkop wrote: post #60

Shameless question: is there a special trick to specify a filename for my screenshots in macOS? I manually rename after, and it's cumbersome.

Is entering the name in advance as you're requesting really any less cumbersome than renaming a generically named file after the fact? In your request, you must provide a file name every time. In the current method, you can just take the snap and not waste time with the filename unless you really just need/want to do it for reasons.

I didn't say in advance. After the fact is likely best, but in a seamless flow that doesn't require using Finder, the terminal, or any other tool. Indeed Gnome solves after the fact, allowing you to just accept the default generated filename, or specify your own, with zero friction.

As others in the thread mention, once you've taken the screenshot, it helpfully dumps you in "the editor" (is this Preview.app? I don't know because it doesn't have a title bar..). In the editor, I am give then option to do a bunch of things, but no option to rename the screenshot. This is disappointing. Hence I was hoping somebody here could fill me in on the trick that will make me happy..

(my complaint scoped to Big Sur btw)

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#125

Post by behnamoh »

susam wrote: post #45

Here is a key sequence I use very often. It takes a screenshot of a chosen window without the window's shadow. - First, type command + shift + 4 (the mouse pointer turns into crosshair). - Then type the space bar (the crosshair turns into a camera icon). - Hover the mouse pointer (a camera icon now), to highlight the chosen window. - Finally, hold the option key and click. This sounds like a lot of steps but it becom…

You can change the Screenshots icon to something else too. Mine looks like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/zX5f4fqN/1.png

Makes it easier to find visually.

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#127

Post by marcellus23 »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #118
hbn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's intuitive to do the basic stuff casual users need. If you want to go beyond that, you figure out how by doing some basic research. The OS isn't going to upload an entire reference manual into your brain as soon as you boot it for the first time.

And no one but you is claiming anything about manuals being beamed into brains. I disagree with the idea that MacOS is any more intuitive than any other modern OS (which is the claim that Apple and that I've heard others, make; I'm not saying you are making that claim necessarily). And to bring this back on point, to my very specific original comment, the poster I was responding too said this wasn't "hidden behind a…

> And to bring this back on point, to my very specific original comment, the poster I was responding too said this wasn't "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut" when it most definitely was

I'm that original poster. The comment I responded to was clearly referring to holding "ctrl" in order to save to clipboard, not referring to the screenshot ability itself (which as others have mentioned, is not hidden behind a keyboard shortcut, but is an app in Applications/Utilities)

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#128

Post by eyelidlessness »

nsonha wrote: post #35
muhammadusman wrote: post #10

Hold control to save to your clipboard instead of a folder/desktop.

people love to talk about how many useful features MacOS has and how user-friendly it is but too many are buried behind a keyboard shortcut with no other way to access. And no "read the manual" isn't it. From certain scale the manual should be out of the window and UI should accomodate for people to learn while using it.

A great thing is that they’re very seldom not also in one of the app menus. Memorizing cmd + ? (Help menu search, sorta like Spotlight for the app and can find any standard menu items) is often a lot easier than remembering a bunch of other commands, and great for discovering them.

Another great thing is they’re generally quite consistent across apps, so memorizing one is usually applicable system wide. And another great thing is that if you don’t like the defaults (or have a menu item you wish had a shortcut in the first place), they’re almost always configurable.

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#129

Post by eyelidlessness »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #55
marcellus23 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't hidden behind a keyboard shortcut. CMD+Shift+5 exposes the full screenshot UI, and under the clearly-named Options button is a menu that lets you pick the clipboard as the place to save. Holding CTRL is just a... well... "shortcut" for that.

That is literally the definition of "hidden behind a keyboard shortcut" - you have to be told or lookup CMD+Shift-5 before you can get to the full screenshot UI. It's been a while since I first used MacOS, but I don't remember it telling me how to do that.

There’s also just an app you can launch like any other, and it works exactly the same way, no keyboard shortcuts necessary.

Re: macOS screenshot tricks to impress your co-workers

#130

Post by ggm »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #76
hbn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you want them to inform you other than RTFM and word of mouth? Do you want constant buttons on screen at all times for every possible OS-level functionality?

I didn't give any value judgement to it and I don't have any suggestions as I really haven't spent a lot of time on that problem space. If I become an OS developer I'll give that problem some thought. But the idea that Mac is somehow "intuitive" is laughable, IMO (I say that as someone who has used a wide variety of computer OSes since the 80s).

The quality I take from it, is that the cmd/option/shift behaviours as modifiers, are policed well, and its like emacs: there's an overall consistency to what they want you to do, burned into muscle memory.

You cannot realistically make every single cmd+ mnemonic. They do the best they can inside the circumstances, and then having chosen a base key, they say "ok. what do we bind to the alternates via option/shift" so it makes contextual sense.

I regard that as seeking intuitive behaviour. You are invited to (subconsciously) consider CMD+key as the base to learn, and then CMD+OPTION or CMD+SHIFT variants as the obvious alternates.

The key here, is ownership of the UI/UX: they police this. Much though Microsoft tries, it doesn't police this well enough across the independent app vendors outside of a tiny core of functions. Between Gnome and KDE, there is no policing.

I said emacs, because the basics of modifying lines of text in most things now, are emacs line modifiers by inheritance: because the X10-> X11 -> XOrg uplift means that the web omnibar and text boxes are inherently derived from X, the keystrokes to edit text are inherited from MIT X which inherited from MIT emacs.

As a VI user I just had to come to terms with this: Sure, you CAN force override them to VI friendly form, nobody does:

we're all emacs keystroke users in this narrow sense. Emacs won.

Post reply on HN