Screen Capture Location – How to Change macOS Screen Capture Storage Path

defaultsmacospathscreen capture

As a developer, I take a lot of screen captures. I often take screen shots to share with Stack Exchange members in chat.

The problem is my Desktop is so cluttered with screen captures that they're now overlapping! I'd like to save all screenshots in a dedicated folder or directory.

In macOS, how do I change the default location where screen captures are saved?

These are the screen shots taken with CommandShift3 or CommandShift4 keyboard shortcuts.

I would prefer a solution which doesn't require installing any software.

Best Answer

According to this page...

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location <path>

Also, to turn on/off shadow:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false

And to change file type:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type <format>

You'll want to

killall SystemUIServer

to make the commands take effect.

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