Filed under: Tips and tricks, Terminal Tips, TUAW Tips
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
peter gilbert said 5:10PM on 7-28-2009
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... !
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peter gilbert said 5:14PM on 7-28-2009
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
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oliver hart said 6:09PM on 7-28-2009
and to change the format of screenshots to jpeg in terminal-
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpeg
Rick said 9:20AM on 7-29-2009
Thanks for the jpg tip! I'll try that when I get home.
iLikeMyiPhone said 5:19PM on 7-28-2009
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 :)
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Link said 5:23PM on 7-28-2009
Again, Secrets (http://secrets.blacktree.com/) can change that. Specifically, this one: http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit?id=2855).
link.dupont said 5:21PM on 7-28-2009
You can also change the screenshot location using Secrets: http://secrets.blacktree.com/
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Mark said 8:21PM on 7-28-2009
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!
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mex said 8:04AM on 7-29-2009
great tip! thanks!
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Rick said 9:24AM on 7-29-2009
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.
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Cyborg said 10:54AM on 7-29-2009
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.
Rachelle Murphy said 10:57PM on 8-29-2009
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
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