- Published on
Changing Mac default screenshot file format to jpg
- Authors
- Name
- interglobalmedia
- @letsbsocial1
In case if you don’t already know, OS X
screenshots created with the Shift + Command + 5
keys are pngs
by default. However, pngs
are not compatible with GatsbyJS
! And I wanted to have the option
of creating screenshots for use on GatsbyJS
sites. I thought, there has to be a way of changing the default screenshot
format! And guess what! There is.
If you want to change the default format
for screenshots
created with the Shift + Command + 5
keys on Big Sur
(or even earlier), run the following command
in Terminal
(iTerm2
for me) and then press the return
key:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg;killall SystemUIServer
It is required that you run this command
in Terminal
in order to implement the change. Yet another reason why it is so important to learn how to use the Command Line Interface
(Terminal
program).
I found this information
in the post entitled How to Change the Screenshot File Format to JPG on Mac on the website maketecheasier.com. It also covers changing the default png
format to GIF
, TIFF
, PDF
, and reverting back to the original screenshot file format
(png
). Don’t freak out if you see mention of using the Command + Shift + 3
keys as the keyboard shortcut
. When you use the 3
key, it captures your entire screen, which you probably don’t want. The 5
key allows you to select the part of your screen
you want to capture, especially if you only want to capture the exact dimensions
of a browser
tab/window. You can also make a screen recording
with the same keyboard shortcut
. Instead of selecting screen capture
, you would select screen recording
. I wrote a post exactly about that entitled How to take a screenshot on your Mac (Mojave or later). It covers how to make screen recordings
as well.
Happy screen capture!