Change default screenshot format Video

Change default screenshot format Video Transcript

Mike in Michigan wrote in complaining that while he loves the easy way to take screenshots in OS X, he didn't like that they saved as PNGs. Not that he has anything against PNGs, mind you, but most of the sites he visits only let him embed JPEGs. Well Mike, we can help. Command-Shift-3 is the command that takes a screenshot in OS X (or Command-Shift-4 if you just want part of the screen) And as you can see, it saves the image as a PNG. In Mac OS X 10.4 and later, you can change the default screenshot format at the command line. Open Terminal and type in: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type and your image format. Which could be JPG, TIFF, PDF, BMPor PICT or others. You can even change it back to PNG with this command if you change your mind later. I'm going to make mine JPG, since that's what Mike is after. Press Return. Then log out and log back in again. Now let's press Command-Shift-3 again. And the screenshot is saved as a JPG. I hope this helps out Mike and many others. I'm Tom Merritt, CNET.com.