By default, Microsoft Windows 7 and above comes with Snipping Tool, which is a basic screenshot tool you can use. Nevertheless, there are instances when Windows Snipping Tool becomes a bit inefficient, such as when you need in-built screenshot editing features or integrated sharing features. Best Snipping Tool for Mac If you want a snipping tool packed with additional features, download Skitch, from the creators of Evernote. Skitch is a free snipping tool app for Macs that also allows you to easily draw arrows, boxes, add text, resize the image, and much more.
Do you want to snip and paste on your Mac? You have come to the right place because here we will give you the best snipping tools for Mac OS.
It’s no wonder that you want to snip on a Mac. Many people want to take screenshots of their desktop. Here are some reasons you may need snipping tools for your Mac:
- You need to make tutorial videos for students
- You want to share your screen with friends
- Your work requires you to take a screenshot and send it to someone
- Snipping tools for Mac can help you keep records of important documents that you can’t download
Bloggers and computer users rely on snipping tools for their everyday life. Below, you will find the best apps to help you capture your screen.
Our topics
- 3 External/installable snipping tools for Mac
- 4 Conclusion
Are all snipping tools the same?
Before you go ahead and download a tool for your needs, it’s important to know that snipping tools for Mac aren’t all the same.
Some tools allow you to take a screenshot of your full desktop, while others allow you to capture selected areas on your desktop.
Similarly, some tools let you zoom into the area you want to capture, as well as add graphics and text to the screenshots.
Take a screenshot using Mac’s built-in tool
If you need to take screenshots on your Mac, the first thing to try is the native screen capture tool (Grab) that comes pre-installed on your computer. Here is how to use this tool:
- Press Command + Shift + 3 together to take a screenshot of your desktop at any time
- You can also take a screenshot of a boxed area using Command + Shift + 4
- To take a screenshot of a particular window on your desktop, press Command + Shift + 4 + Space keys when the particular window is active
Once you have taken a screenshot, simply press Command + Shift + 3 + Control to copy it to the clipboard.
External/installable snipping tools for Mac
If for any reason, you want to extend the functionality of your built-in screenshot tool, you will need to try a third-party app. These apps come with many additional features that make them better than Mac’s built-in tool.
Here are some of the best snipping tools for Mac. Pick the one that gives you the features you want.
1. Snagit
Snagit lets you capture your Mac desktop with ease. This tool not only gives you basic image capturing but it also allows you to record the screen, as well.
Snagit is a powerful tool with plenty of advanced features to impress users.
Features
- Capture desktop
- Easily take a screenshot of scrolling screens
- Capture video stills
- Create animated gifs from captured screens
- Easy image editing
- Add text, stamps, shapes, and emoticons
- Capture the full desktop or a particular window
- Users can also capture a particular selected area using this tool
2. Jing
Jing is easily one of the best snipping tools for Mac. It’s visually pleasing and offers many premium features.
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This tool is easy to use. You simply use the drag-and-select feature to indicate the area you want to capture and then take the screenshot with a single click.
Features
- Capture active windows
- Take screenshots of scrolling text
- Capture full desktop, active window, or only the selected area
- Record video of your desktop activity
- Screenshots are easy to share with your friends and can be sent via email
- Tons of visual elements to add to your captured images, such as annotations, highlights, captions, and so on
- Hundreds of effects and text tools to help you create powerful screenshots
3. Lightshot
When it comes to snipping tools for Mac, you can’t ignore Lightshot. Like other top tools, it offers you plenty of features to make your experience worthwhile.
Lightshot is a fast tool that incorporates many social elements. It enhances your images and allows you to go beyond Mac’s default tool.
Features
- Capture screens using drag-and-select
- Find similar images after you capture a screenshot
- Use various image enhancing tools to enhance your images
- Easily share your images with your friends on social media
- Simply and intuitive user interface
- Available for Mac, Windows, and Chrome OS
4. Nimbus Screenshot and Screencast
Nimbus is a browser-based screen capture tool. You don’t have to install it on your system like other snipping tools for Mac.
Nimbus is great for capturing browser windows. You can capture an area and then use the cropping feature to fix your image dimensions.
Features
- Robust screenshot app for your browser
- Great editor interface for easy customization
- Edit screens after capturing the image
- Add objects to your images
- Capture images using the browser address bar, context menu, or set up a hotkey to be used with Nimbus
- Easily create a freehand drawing on the image
- Record videos with this app
- Option to save images in various formats
5. ScreenCloud
ScreenCloud is among the top snipping tools for Mac. It allows you to capture and share your screen with your friends.
ScreenCloud is a unique snipping tool for Mac since it comes with a cloud sharing website. You can upload images to the cloud and share the URL with your friends.
Features
- Snip and share your screen with ScreenCloud
- No installation required, as the tool works as a browser extension
- Upload images to ScreenCloud website for quick sharing
- Share your screenshots on popular image sharing websites, such as Imgur and Dropbox
- Use drag-and-select feature to capture exactly the area of your desktop you need
- Use a hotkey or simply click on the screenshot button in your browser
- Easy to save images on your desktop
Snipping On A Mac
6. Apowersoft Mac Screenshot
Apowersoft Mac Screenshot is a powerful screen capturing tool for Mac. Just like other snipping tools for Mac in this list, this app also surpasses the built-in Mac tool for capturing your desktop.
Features
- Take a screenshot of your entire desktop or capture a selected area
- You can save the image in a format of your choice
- The tool offers plenty of editing options to get the desired result
- Upload or share your screens with a single click
- Zoom in on your screen before capturing for clearer text
Conclusion
Many users want to install a third-party snipping tool on their Mac since the built-in tool only offers basic functionality.
The tools we discussed above offer many extended features that will help you make the most of your screenshots. You can annotate, add text, and use various graphic elements to improve your images.
Petr is a serial tech entrepreneur and the CEO of Apro Software, a machine learning company. Whenever he’s not blogging about technology for itechgyan.com or softwarebattle.com, Petr enjoys playing sports and going to the movies. He’s also deeply interested about mediation, Buddhism and biohacking.
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Since Window 7, Microsoft has been including an incredibly handy tool with its operating system: Snipping Tool. According to Microsoft, the easiest way to make a copy of something is to take a snapshot of the screen, and that’s exactly what the Snipping Tool allows you to do.
In this article, we describe what the Snipping Tool does and how to use it, and we also list many Snipping Tool Mac alternatives.
Snipping Tool Under Microscope
The idiom “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially applicable in today’s digital age. Sharing of images has become incredibly easy, and much of what we do every day takes place on a computer screen. As such, people naturally want to capture what they write, see, create, and do for a myriad of different reasons.
To make screenshot-taking easier for users, Microsoft has created Snipping Tool. To access this tool, select the Start button, type snipping tool in the search box on the taskbar, and then select Snipping Tool from the list of results.
A small window will appear on your screen with four snipping modes:
- Free-form snip: this option allows you to draw a free-form shape around an object and save it as an image file.
- Rectangular snip: this option allows you to drag the cursor around an object to form a rectangle and save it as an image file.
- Window snip: this option allows you to select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, and save it as an image file.
- Full-screen snip: this option captures the entire screen and saves it as an image file.
Other features of Snipping Tool include the option to set a delay as well as the option to annotate your snips by selecting the Pen or Highlighter buttons. Snipping Tool also supports a number of keyboard shortcuts:
- Alt + M: choose a snipping mode.
- Alt + N: create a new snip in the same mode as the last one.
- Shift + arrow keys: moves the cursor to select a rectangular snip area.
- Alt + D: delays capture by 1-5 seconds.
- Ctrl + C: copies the snip to clipboard.
- Ctrl +: saves the snip.
- Ctrl + PrtScn: captures the entire screen, including the open menu.
As you can see, Snipping Tool is quite powerful for such a small utility that many users are not even aware of. Unfortunately, we have bad news for Windows users who wonder how to use Snipping Tool on Mac: Apple’s operating system doesn’t come with this useful application. But it comes with another screenshot-taking tool, called Grab, and you can think of it as Snipping Tool for Mac.
Snipping Tool for Mac: Grab
Grab is a Mac Snipping Tool alternative that makes it possible to take screenshots of your screen and save them as image files. Just like Snipping Tool for Windows, Grab has several screen-capture modes, and it also supports keyboard shortcuts. Best of all, there’s no need to look for Snipping Tool download for Mac links as Grab comes included with all recent versions of macOS.
To access Grab, you can either:
- Open it from the Utilities folder under Applications.
- Type /Applications/Utilities/Grab.app in Finder.
- Open Launchpad → Other → Grab.
- Open Spotlight and type in Grab.
By default, Grab saves screenshots in the PNG image file format. PNG is the most widely used lossless image compression format on the Internet, and it has a number of advantages over other lossless image compression formats. The problem with the PNG file format is that it produces somewhat large files. Fortunately, Grab allows you to change the default file format to JPG, TIFF, GIF, and PDF formats.
- To change it to JPG, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg” without the quotation marks.
- To change it to TIFF, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type tiff” without the quotation marks.
- To change it to GIF, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type gif” without the quotation marks.
- To change it to PDF, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf” without the quotation marks.
- To change it back to PNG, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png” without the quotation marks.
Okay, so you have Grab open, configured, and ready, but how do you take a picture of your screen or a part of it? You have several options:
- Grab → Capture → Selection: using this option, you can capture a specific region of your screen by dragging a selection box around.
- Shift + Command + A: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the selection option.
- Grab → Capture → Window: using this option, you can capture a screenshot of a window that you select.
- Shift + Command + W: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the window-capture option.
- Grap → Capture → Screen: using this option, you can capture a screenshot of your whole screen.
- Command + Z: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the screen-capture option.
- Grab → Capture → Timed Screen: using this option, you can start a 10-second timer, select a part of your screen, and then take a screenshot.
- Shift + Command + Z: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the timed screen-capture option.
More Snipping Tool Mac Alternatives
If you would prefer even simpler alternative to Snipping Tool for Mac than Grab, you’ll be pleased to know that macOS comes with not one but three such alternatives:
- Command + Shift + 3: captures a screenshot of your entire screen.
- Command + Shift + 4: turns the cursor into a crosshair, allowing you to select which portion of your screen you would like to capture.
- Command + Shift + 4 + Space: after pressing the space bar, the crosshair turns into a little camera icon, allowing you to move over any open window to take a screenshot of it.
All screenshots taken using these three shortcuts are saved to your desktop. You can also press control to save the screenshots to your clipboard instead, which is useful if you intend to paste them into other applications anyway.
Skitch For Mac
Greenshot
Free Snipping Tool For Mac Download
Greenshot is an advanced screenshot-taking tool with built-in OCR capabilities. Just like Snipping Tool for Windows, Greenshot allows you to create screenshots of a selected region, window, or entire screen. It can even capture complete web pages from Internet Explorer without any addons. You can easily annotate, highlight, or obfuscate, the screenshots you take with Greenshot using the application itself and export them in various ways. Greenshot is completely free, open source, and it runs on both macOS and Windows.
LightShot
LightShot is a Mac Snipping Tool alternative and arguably the fastest way how to take a customizable screenshot. The application features a simple and intuitive user interface, which allows you to select any area on your desktop and take its screenshot with just two button-clicks. You can then share your screenshots with others by saving them to your computer or uploading them to LightShot’s servers. LightShot comes with an intuitive yet powerful screenshot editor, so you don’t have to leave the application just to highlight a part of a screenshot or add an annotation.
Snagit
Snagit is more than yet another Snipping Tool for Mac: it’s a full-featured screen-capture software with built-in advanced image editing and screen recording capabilities. The target audience of this powerful application is content creators, educators, business people, and really anyone who wants to add visuals to communicate clearly and be more engaging. With Snagit, you can capture your entire desktop, region, window, or scrolling screen. It takes just a few clicks to make complex edits right within the application, and Snagit’s user interface is so intuitive that using it is a pleasure.
Recover Deleted Screenshots on Mac
Disk Drill
Snip It For Mac Download
Free anti virus program removal tool for mac os 10. Disk Drill isn’t a Snipping Tool alternative for Mac computers — it’s something even better. With Disk Drill, you can recover all common and not-so-common image file formats, so you’ll never lose any of your screenshots, pictures, videos, music, documents, or any other files since Disk Drill supports the recovery of over 200 file formats.
You can download Disk Drill for free and use it without any expert knowledge, and there are several extra reasons why you should definitely do so because it comes with extra free disk tools that can find duplicates on your hard drive, backup your data, or monitor the health of your hard drive, among many other things.
Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery
Disk Drill has been successfully used to recover important files by countless professional and home users alike, establishing itself as the most accessible and reliable data recovery solutions for macOS and Windows.