On your Mac, you might already know the keyboard shortcuts to take the following kinds of screenshots:

Shift+Command+3 ( ⇧ ⌘ 3) to capture the entire screen
Shift+Command+4 ( ⇧ ⌘ 4) to capture a portion of the screen

But did you know that you can also capture a snapshot of an entire app window without needing to drag the crosshair around said app window?

After invoking Shift+Command+4, just press the spacebar and the pointer will change from a crosshair into a camera icon.

In that mode, the window under the mouse cursor will turn blue indicating it's the one currently targeted, so simply clicking on the theft mouse button will take a snapshot of that window.

By default, the snapshot will include a grey shadow around the window (see below):

It's possible to remove this shadow (and reduce the file size) by holding the Option key while clicking on the desired window:

Snapshot without a shadow (File size = 58 KB)

In summary:

Shift+Command+4 then Spacebar then Click will snapshot an entire app window with a shadow
Shift+Command+4 then Spacebar then Option+Click will snapshot an entire app window without a shadow

In case you never want a shadow, you can change the default behaviour:

Open the Terminal app (via Command + Spacebar then type Terminal)
Run the two following Terminal commands:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

After running those two commands, Shift+Command+4+Spacebar will snapshot a window without a shadow.

If you want to revert back, just replace “-bool true” by “-bool false” in the first terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false
killall SystemUIServer

And you, how often do you need to make screenshots of an entire app window on your Mac?

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