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Oh my goodness thank you so much macOS for giving us a set of awesome screenshot tools and a way to edit them immediately in Preview.app. (Capture to clipboard

Oh my goodness thank you so much macOS for giving us a set of awesome screenshot tools and a way to edit them immediately in Preview.app. (Capture to clipboard, then command-N in Preview defaulting to new-from-clipboard.) It’s so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker in chat or a task tool. I recently discovered that with my trusty Logitech G203 I can write cursive on my images with about the same legibility as I can on a whiteboard. Very pleasing.

rektide 4y ago
its confusing & painful as heck to me that these are different tools with different interfaces & capabilities.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  I was a Windows guy for a long time, most of my life actually. Then circumstances forced me to use a Mac for a period of time and I switched. Now I can barely remember half of what I used to jump around Windows. Our cognitive load really isn't built to handle mastery of multiple wildly different operating systems, IMO. Not many people claim to be both Windows and Mac power users, though I'm certain some of those do exist.
reaperducer 4y ago
It’s so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker in chat or a task tool. You can make it even faster by cutting out the Preview step. When the thumbnail of the screenshot appears in the lower-right corner of the screen, click it, and then you can use Markup to annotate the image right there, and then share it as needed. Since I don't have your Logitech, I don't know if this method will support your hand-writing step. But it's worth a try, and is still useful for drawing circles and arrows and things on screenshots before firing them off to a coworker.
- aidos 4y ago
  You say share as needed, but I’ve not found a great way to just grab it to the clipboard or get the file handle from there. My go to workaround is to screenshot, annotate, screenshot the annotation tool into clipboard and paste that. (I know)
  - gorgoiler 4y ago
    You are in good company. I often screenshot two things, arrange the windows next to or on top of each other, screenshot that and use it as the backdrop for my world domination plans / next releng planning meeting.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    The two ways I do it are: 1. If the program I'm trying to share with is available in the Share control, I use that. 2. Since I already have a Screenshots folder in my dock that displays as a fan, and is sorted by most recently added, I click "done" on the annotated screenshot, then I can click on that folder in the dock, and it's right there, ready to be dragged into any other application.
    - aidos 4y ago
      This is a reasonable way of dealing with it. I've just created the dock folder and now it's a lot easier to get to (except that I have dock as minimal as possible, so it's still a little fiddly). It does feel like just hitting ctrl-c in annotations should copy to clipboard. I know pretty much every other combination of screenshot shortcut mentioned here, but this workflow has irked me ever since they added the annotation tools. I can work with this, thanks!
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    ⌘c after annotating in the way GP mentioned copies the annotated screenshot to the clipboard, you don't need to screenshot the tool.
    - aidos 4y ago
woojoo666 4y ago
I never found screenshotting on macOS intuitive. Using ShareX on Windows is like night and day. No need to memorize different shortcuts for each kind of screenshot. Just a single shortcut to enter screenshot mode. Then it's * left click to capture full screen * hover over a window and left click to capture a specific window * click and drag to capture a region * right click to cancel There's also annotation and drawing tools directly in the screenshot mode. Imo this is way better than how macOS opens the editor afterwards. Because for the times you don't need to annotate, you still have to close the preview window. In other words: MacOS * annotation flow: start => capture => annotate * normal flow: start => capture => close preview ShareX * annotation flow: start => annotate => capture * normal flow: start => capture ShareX also supports a ton of different other workflows. After capture it can automatically add the image to your clipboard, or open it in an external image editor, or upload it to imgur and add the link to your clipboard, etc etc. (On Linux the closest thing I have found to ShareX is ksnip [2]. Takes a bit of configuring, for example I recommend disabling tabs, but overall it's good enough for me) [1]: https://getsharex.com/ https://getsharex.com/ [2]: https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip
- varenc 4y ago
  > No need to memorize different shortcuts for each kind of screenshot. Just a single shortcut to enter screenshot mode You don't need to memorize any shortcuts on macOS to take a screenshot. Just open up "Screenshot.app". It's in /Applications/Utilities/ That's a single entry point to all of the screenshot features as well.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    iirc that just shows a toolbar with the different screenshot modes. You still need to manually select a mode, which is not as fast and intuitive as ShareX which combines most of the modes into one
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      Then you are back to the macOS key combo shortcuts, surely? Memorise the one you want and then it's comparable.

rektide 4y ago

its confusing & painful as heck to me that these are different tools with different interfaces & capabilities.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
I was a Windows guy for a long time, most of my life actually. Then circumstances forced me to use a Mac for a period of time and I switched. Now I can barely remember half of what I used to jump around Windows. Our cognitive load really isn't built to handle mastery of multiple wildly different operating systems, IMO. Not many people claim to be both Windows and Mac power users, though I'm certain some of those do exist.

reaperducer 4y ago

It’s so blisteringly effective to grab a portion of the screen, draw on it, copy the whole thing again and paste it to a coworker in chat or a task tool. You can make it even faster by cutting out the Preview step. When the thumbnail of the screenshot appears in the lower-right corner of the screen, click it, and then you can use Markup to annotate the image right there, and then share it as needed. Since I don't have your Logitech, I don't know if this method will support your hand-writing step. But it's worth a try, and is still useful for drawing circles and arrows and things on screenshots before firing them off to a coworker.

aidos 4y ago
You say share as needed, but I’ve not found a great way to just grab it to the clipboard or get the file handle from there. My go to workaround is to screenshot, annotate, screenshot the annotation tool into clipboard and paste that. (I know)
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  You are in good company. I often screenshot two things, arrange the windows next to or on top of each other, screenshot that and use it as the backdrop for my world domination plans / next releng planning meeting.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  The two ways I do it are: 1. If the program I'm trying to share with is available in the Share control, I use that. 2. Since I already have a Screenshots folder in my dock that displays as a fan, and is sorted by most recently added, I click "done" on the annotated screenshot, then I can click on that folder in the dock, and it's right there, ready to be dragged into any other application.
  - aidos 4y ago
    This is a reasonable way of dealing with it. I've just created the dock folder and now it's a lot easier to get to (except that I have dock as minimal as possible, so it's still a little fiddly). It does feel like just hitting ctrl-c in annotations should copy to clipboard. I know pretty much every other combination of screenshot shortcut mentioned here, but this workflow has irked me ever since they added the annotation tools. I can work with this, thanks!
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  ⌘c after annotating in the way GP mentioned copies the annotated screenshot to the clipboard, you don't need to screenshot the tool.
  - aidos 4y ago

woojoo666 4y ago

I never found screenshotting on macOS intuitive. Using ShareX on Windows is like night and day. No need to memorize different shortcuts for each kind of screenshot. Just a single shortcut to enter screenshot mode. Then it's * left click to capture full screen * hover over a window and left click to capture a specific window * click and drag to capture a region * right click to cancel There's also annotation and drawing tools directly in the screenshot mode. Imo this is way better than how macOS opens the editor afterwards. Because for the times you don't need to annotate, you still have to close the preview window. In other words: MacOS * annotation flow: start => capture => annotate * normal flow: start => capture => close preview ShareX * annotation flow: start => annotate => capture * normal flow: start => capture ShareX also supports a ton of different other workflows. After capture it can automatically add the image to your clipboard, or open it in an external image editor, or upload it to imgur and add the link to your clipboard, etc etc. (On Linux the closest thing I have found to ShareX is ksnip [2]. Takes a bit of configuring, for example I recommend disabling tabs, but overall it's good enough for me) [1]: https://getsharex.com/ https://getsharex.com/ [2]: https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip

varenc 4y ago
> No need to memorize different shortcuts for each kind of screenshot. Just a single shortcut to enter screenshot mode You don't need to memorize any shortcuts on macOS to take a screenshot. Just open up "Screenshot.app". It's in /Applications/Utilities/ That's a single entry point to all of the screenshot features as well.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  iirc that just shows a toolbar with the different screenshot modes. You still need to manually select a mode, which is not as fast and intuitive as ShareX which combines most of the modes into one
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Then you are back to the macOS key combo shortcuts, surely? Memorise the one you want and then it's comparable.