Terminal Tips: Change the location of snapped screenshots

Are you tired of all of those icons from screenshots you've taken cluttering up space on your desktop? If you would like them in a different place when you snap them, here's a command to change the location.

Using the Terminal, enter the following command to change the location:


defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures

This snippet will change the default location of saving the screenshot to the Pictures folder. You can also set this location to any folder or volume on your Mac, just substitute ~/Pictures in this command to whatever you want. Once you've run this command, you'll need to restart the SystemUIServer (used to control certain interface elements in Mac OS X), by entering killall SystemUIServer in the Terminal.

If you don't want to use the Terminal, many of the popular Mac maintenance utilities, including OnyX (free). TinkerTool (free), and Cocktail ($14.95), will allow you to change the location of snapped screenshots.

If you're snapping a lot of screenshots, changing the location can be very useful, especially if you're on a portable Mac with limited disk space. Each screenshot can sometimes be over 1MB in size, so if you're tight on space it can be a good idea to store your screenshots elsewhere, like on an external hard drive.

There's also a handy suggestion from our own TJ Luoma: redirect your screenshots to a cached/synchronized folder, like the Pictures folder on your iDisk (if you have iDisk Sync turned on) or a folder in your Dropbox, Live Mesh or SugarSync directories for instant screenshot sharing among multiple machines.

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Are you tired of all of those icons from screenshots you've taken cluttering up space on your desktop? If you would like them in a...

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bethefawn

i love the first line about being tired of these screenshots being on the desktop. the screenshots have been going to the desktop for about 20 years.

July 09 2010 at 8:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rachelle Murphy

FYI- For the location piece: If you have spaces in your path you'll need to replace the empty space (" ") with a back-slash and a space (" ") or you can just click and drag the folder directly into terminal. Here is an example:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/YourNameHere/Desktop/Automatic Screenshots

August 29 2009 at 10:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rick

What would really be ideal, is if the screen shot could be sent to the clipboard instead of a saved file so I can paste into photoshop.

July 29 2009 at 9:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Rick's comment

Cyborg

You can: Just hold down the Ctrl key when taking the screenshot (via Cmd-Shift-3 for full-screen, or Cmd-Shift-4 for a selection). With Ctrl held down, instead of creating a new file, the shot will go to the clipboard - ready for pasting in your application of choice.

July 29 2009 at 10:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

massimo.berta

great tip! thanks!

July 29 2009 at 8:04 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark

I actually use Hazel (www.noodlesoft.com) to monitor my desktop for screenshot files and both rename them to the current date and move them to my screenshots folder, but to do this only 5 minutes after creation - to allow me to email/use the files first. Really useful piece of software!

July 28 2009 at 8:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

link.dupont

You can also change the screenshot location using Secrets: http://secrets.blacktree.com/

July 28 2009 at 5:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

kirankonathala

Do you guys know how in the world I can take just the screenshot but not the white edges surrounding the picture? They are really annoying when I post them on my blog.

Please help :)

July 28 2009 at 5:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to kirankonathala's comment

link.dupont

Again, Secrets (http://secrets.blacktree.com/) can change that. Specifically, this one: http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit?id=2855).

July 28 2009 at 5:23 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

peter gilbert

Sorry about that prior post -- not sure how 1Password got that comment in there... anyway... i find it hard to remember to always unhide the extension of those screenshots so i created this Folder Action to unhide new items as they make it to my ScreenShot folder.

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving files_
repeat with file_ in files_
tell application "Finder"
try
if extension hidden of file_ is true then
set extension hidden of file_ to false
else
set extension hidden of file_ to true
end if
on error e
display dialog e buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try
end tell
end repeat

end adding folder items to

July 28 2009 at 5:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to peter gilbert's comment

oliver hart

and to change the format of screenshots to jpeg in terminal-

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpeg

July 28 2009 at 6:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rick

Thanks for the jpg tip! I'll try that when I get home.

July 29 2009 at 9:20 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

peter gilbert

I took one of the 1st pix of a bride and groom coming down the aisle after the ceremony and the iPhone kind of put a line between them... weird, hope it wasn't an omen... !

July 28 2009 at 5:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply