By default, all screenshots you capture are saved to your Mac’s desktop. If you’d like to change the location where your screenshots save, there’s fortunately a way to do so. Press and hold the Command, Shift, and 5 keys simultaneously. Once the snipping tool appears, click Options. Now, you can check where Mac screenshots are saved. If you haven’t messed around with this setting before, Desktop will be checked by default. You can choose to save the screenshots to Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, Preview, or another location of your choice. Once you’ve chosen a location, any screenshots you take moving forward will be saved there.
All your screenshots are saved as PNG files by default. While you can manually convert the file type of your images if you need to by heading to Apple’s Preview app, you can permanently change the Mac screenshot format by using a simple Terminal command. To do so, launch Terminal by heading to Applications > Utilities. Now, type the following terminal command “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type [file type];killall SystemUIServer” into the Terminal window. Make sure to type the file type, for example, JPG, HEIC, PDF, GIF, or TIFF, in all lowercase in the [file type] placeholder. Press the Return key and all your screenshots will now be saved in your chosen format.
