How to Print Screen on a MacBook Air

The Print Screen feature on a Windows computer is incredibly useful if you are in a situation where you need to show someone else something that you see on your computer.

But that Print Screen key is not present on Macs, which can leave you wondering how to do a print screen on a Macbook.

Fortunately, this is something that you can do on the computer using the default capabilities of the operating system, although the method for doing so is slightly different from the method that you would use in Windows.

Our guide below will show you how to take a screenshot on a MacBook Air that will then be saved as a .png image file on your desktop.

You can then share, edit, or otherwise handle that print screen image in the same way that you would any other picture file on your computer.

Running out of space? Find out how to delete junk files from your Mac and free up some of your storage.

How to Save a Picture of Your Screen on a Mac

The steps in this article were performed on a MacBook Air running the MacOS version of the operating system. When you print screen on a Mac using the method described below, the screenshot image will be saved as a .png file on your Mac’s desktop.

You can take screenshots of a lot of other devices, too. Our Pixel 4A screenshot article will show you how to do it on an Android phone.

Step 1: Set up your Mac’s screen so that the information that you want to capture in the screenshot is visible. You can click the yellow circle at the top-left corner of any windows that you don’t want to be visible in the screenshot. This will minimize the window. Alternatively you can click the red circle to close the window.

how to take a picture of your macbook air screen

Step 2: Simultaneously press the command + shift + 3 keys on your keyboard.

how to print screen on a mac

Step 3: Locate your screenshot on your desktop. Your Mac will automatically give the screenshot a filename similar to Screen Shot 2017-03-24 at 11.29.11 AM, but will replace the date and time with the information corresponding to when you took the screenshot on your own computer. Note that you can click on that filename and delete it or edit it to suit your own needs.

how to take a screenshot on a mac

Are there a lot of large files on your computer, such as old TV shop episodes or movies, that you want to remove to make space for new files? Learn how to delete old and large files from a MacBook and free up some room on your hard drive.

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