How to take a screenshot of any Mac menu

Learn how to capture Mac menu screenshots effortlessly with step-by-step guidance in our comprehensive article.

Screenshot of a Mac menu item

You can take a screenshot of any menu in any app on your Mac, with or without the menu title. This also works with windows in the Finder and most apps.

Capture the whole screen and crop the menu area

You basically capture a screenshot of the whole screen and edit the image in your favorite editor.

1) Click the menu in an app to reveal its contents.

2) Highlight a desired menu item, if necessary.

3) Press Command + Shift + 3 on the keyboard.

4) The screenshot is saved as a PNG image file on your desktop. You can now crop it using Preview, Photos, or Quick Look and only keep the menu portion of the image.

Capture a selection screenshot to include the menu title

To avoid having to crop out unwanted parts from your screenshot using Preview or a third-party image editor, you can instead capture a selection screenshot:

1) Click the menu in your favorite app to reveal its contents.

2) Press Command + Shift + 4 on the keyboard.

3) The pointer changes to a crosshair. Hold the mouse or trackpad button, then start dragging to select the menu.

4) Release the mouse or trackpad button to screenshot the highlighted item. To cancel without taking a screenshot, press the esc key.

Tip: If you have misjudged the starting point of your selection, hold the Space bar key before releasing the mouse button to reposition the selection area or use other modifier keys to precisely adjust your selection.

Now, I must admit I usually avoid using the above methods, for they require pixel-perfect precision to ensure that the selection area includes only menu graphics. This can be challenging due to the post-processing work required to mask out unwanted parts around the menu.

That’s because macOS menus have rounded corners and use the drop shadow effect, and getting rid of shadows manually is a tremendously time-consuming task.

There’s a better way to screenshot the contents of a menu.

Screenshot a menu without the title

1) Click the menu in your favorite app to reveal its contents.

2) Move the pointer to highlight a desired menu item if necessary.

3) Press Command + Shift + 4 on the keyboard. You will notice that the pointer has changed to a crosshair.

4) Now press the Space bar key to change the pointer to a camera. You will notice that pressing the Space bar key automatically highlights the menu underneath the camera icon.

5) Move the camera icon over a menu to highlight it, then click the mouse or trackpad button.

This method lets you grab a screenshot of any menu sans its title. Here’s a screenshot of the Apple menu with the About This Mac option highlighted.

And this is the Finder’s View menu captured using the method described above.

You can easily take a screenshot of any sub-menu as well. To do that, be sure to open a sub-menu you’d like to capture before pressing your screenshot key combination.

Here’s the Finder’s Arrange By sub-menu.

Use the timed screenshot feature to capture menus

You can take timed screenshots that will capture the menu item without additional changes.

1) Press Command + Shift + 5 to open the screenshot tool. Now, click Options and set the timer to 5 or 10 seconds. Next, set the tool to take a screenshot of the selected window.

Capture timed screenshot of a mac app window

2) Now, reveal the menu you want to screenshot and highlight a sub-menu if necessary.

Trying to take screenshot of a menu item

3) Press Command + Shift + 5 and take a screenshot of the menu item.

Taking timed screenshot of Apple Menu item

4) The timer will now run for 5 or 10 seconds, and your menu will also revert to its original state. Once the timer ends, the captured screenshot will not have the changes that would normally have been when pressing the Command + Shift keys. Here’s how it looks:

Took screenshot of Apple Menu without change

Other Mac screenshotting tips: