How-to guides for screenshots and screen recording on Mac

Capturing

How to take a scrolling screenshot on a Mac

macOS has no built-in scrolling screenshot: ⇧⌘5 captures what is on screen and stops there. For a web page, Safari, Chrome and Firefox can export the full page for free (so can the GoFullPage extension); for a scrolling app window you need an app that stitches, such as Shottr, which scrolls for you or lets you scroll in its manual mode, CleanShot X, which can also scroll sideways, or Snapline, where you press ⌥⌘L and scroll down while it stitches one tall PNG.

How to pin a screenshot on your screen on Mac

macOS has no always-on-top toggle, but a screenshot pasted into a Stickies note stays above ordinary windows once you choose Window → Float on Top. Shottr, CleanShot X and Capso pin a capture in one step (CleanShot X and Capso can let clicks pass through it), and Snapline pins any capture as its own floating window above every app, one click from the capture itself.

How to annotate a screenshot on Mac

macOS’s free Markup tool, in the screenshot thumbnail and in Preview, draws shapes, arrows, text and a signature onto a screenshot, but once you save, the marks are part of the pixels and can’t be moved or deleted. Snapline’s annotation editor keeps every shape, arrow and numbered badge as its own vector, so a shot marked up last week can still be changed, with redactions kept as separate objects beside them.

How to redact a screenshot on Mac

Cover sensitive text with a solid box rather than blur or pixelation (security researchers have published a tool that turns pixelated text back into the original), and make sure the box is merged into the image: Preview does it for free with a filled rectangle from the Markup toolbar. To find what needs hiding, Snagit and Snapline both have a Smart Redact that scans the image; Snapline’s runs on device, also looks for API keys, tokens and IBANs, and can run on every capture.

How to let Claude Code or Cursor see your Mac’s screen

An AI coding assistant sees only what you hand it, so the free route is to copy a screenshot to the clipboard (hold Control with the screenshot keys) and paste it into the chat. Browser servers such as Playwright MCP and Chrome DevTools MCP let an assistant look at the pages they drive; for a native app, a simulator or an error dialog, Snapline’s local MCP server, off by default, lets Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Codex or Antigravity capture the screen once you allow it.

Text in screenshots and on screen

How to extract text from a screenshot on Mac

Open the screenshot in Preview, drag across the words, Control-click and choose Copy Text: that is Live Text, built into macOS 14 or later where Apple offers it in your language, and for a one-off it is the right answer. TextSniper and the OCR modes in CleanShot X and Shottr read a selected rectangle without opening a file; Snapline also reads every screenshot in the background, on device, so a shot from last month can be found by a word that was in it.

How to copy text from anywhere on your Mac’s screen

Free and built in: press ⌃⇧⌘4 to put a screenshot of the words on the clipboard, then in Preview choose File → New from Clipboard, drag across the text and choose Copy Text; nothing is saved to your desktop. TextSniper, Shottr, TRex and the text modes in CleanShot X and Capso turn that into one drag, and Snapline’s Capture Text (⌥⌘E) also pastes wrapped lines as paragraphs, copies a table as cells and code with its indentation, and keeps each read in History as a searchable text clip unless you switch that off.

How to translate a screenshot on Mac

Open the screenshot in Preview, drag across the text, Control-click and choose Translate; Apple notes that translation isn’t available in every language, country or region. Google Translate’s Images tab translates the whole picture but uploads it to Google, Capso shows a translation card for an area you select, and Snapline’s Text View translates every block of a capture on device, beside the original (macOS 15 or later).

Screen recording

How to record your screen with keystrokes showing on Mac

⇧⌘5 and QuickTime can show mouse clicks as a circle, but neither can show which keys you pressed. The free route is KeyCastr, an open-source visualizer that draws the keys on screen for any recorder to capture; CleanShot X and Screen Studio have the overlay built in, and Snapline draws a keystroke capsule and click rings into its own recordings from two switches on the Record Screen bar.

How to convert a screen recording to GIF on Mac

macOS records the screen but only ever saves a QuickTime movie, never a GIF. Free route: drop the .mov on Gifski or run ffmpeg in Terminal; CleanShot X and Capso record straight to GIF and Screen Studio exports one, while Snapline converts a finished recording in its Trim Editor, with Chat, Docs and Full presets and the file’s size quoted before you click.

How to zoom in during a screen recording on Mac

macOS has no zoom while recording: neither ⇧⌘5 nor QuickTime Player can change the framing once the take has started. Free route: record wide and zoom afterwards with iMovie’s Crop to Fill or ffmpeg’s zoompan filter; Screen Studio, CleanShot X (since version 5.0) and Cap add editable zooms in their own editors after the take, and in Snapline ⌥⌘Z pushes the running recording in to 2× on whatever the pointer is over.