Gavin Morrice

is a web and iOS developer from Edinburgh, Scotland.

more about me ยป

How to change the screenshot path in Mac OS X

I use screenshots all the time! Combined with CloudApp screenshots are a really fast and easy way to share visual information between colleagues and clients.

If you don't already know how to take a screenshot on Mac OS X, simply press shift + cmd + 3 or shift + cmd + 4 to take a section of the screen.

The problem with taking a lot of screenshots is that your desktop soon fills up with dozens of image files - making it difficult to sort through. Here's my solution to keeping your screenshots in check:

Open terminal (Applications > Utilities Terminal) and type the following commands:

mkdir ~/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/[YourUsername]/Screenshots

note - replace [YourUsername] with your apple user name. In my case /Users/Gavin/Screenshots

Now log out of OS X and log back in.

From now on your screenshots should be saved to /Users/YourName/Screenshots