SCREENCAPTURE(1) BSD General Commands Manual SCREENCAPTURE(1)NAMEscreencapture — capture images from the screen and save them to a file or
the clipboard
SYNOPSISscreencapture [-SWCTMPcimswxto] file
DESCRIPTION
The screencapture utility is not very well documented to date. A list of
options follows.
-c Force screen capture to go to the clipboard.
-C Capture the cursor as well as the screen. Only allowed in non-
interactive modes.
-i Capture screen interactively, by selection or window. The con‐
trol key will cause the screen shot to go to the clipboard. The
space key will toggle between mouse selection and window selec‐
tion modes. The escape key will cancel the interactive screen
shot.
-m Only capture the main monitor, undefined if -i is set.
-M Open the taken picture in a new Mail message.
-o In window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window.
-P Open the taken picture in a Preview window.
-s Only allow mouse selection mode.
-S In window capture mode, capture the screen instead of the window.
-t <format> Image format to create, default is png (other options
include pdf, jpg, tiff and other formats).
-T <seconds> Take the picture after a delay of <seconds>, default is
5.
-w Only allow window selection mode.
-W Start interaction in window selection mode.
-x Do not play sounds.
-a Do not capture attached windows.
-r Do not add screen dpi meta data to captured file.
files where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen
BUGS
Better documentation is needed for this utility.
SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
To capture screen content while logged in via ssh, you must launch
screencapture in the same mach bootstrap hierarchy as loginwindow:
PID=pid of loginwindow
sudo launchctl bsexec $PID screencapture [options]
HISTORY
A screencapture utility first appeared in Mac OS X v10.2.
Mac OS June 16, 2004 Mac OS
