How to Set a Screenshot Timer on Your Mac
You don’t always want to take a screenshot of your Mac right after you hit the screenshot shortcut – sometimes you can give yourself a few seconds to set things up right before you take the screenshot. Luckily, your Mac allows you to do this, and we’ll show you how.
The built-in screenshot capture tool is all you need to get started, so we’ll be focusing on that. The first step involves opening the Screenshot Options on Mac. To do this, use the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + 5 . When you press this keyboard shortcut, your Mac will open a floating menu with screenshot options.
From the screenshot menu, choose one of the three icons next to the close button — Capture Full Screen, Capture Entire Window, or Capture Selected Portion. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, as long as you click on one of these three icons. When you do, you will see an Options button on the right side of the screenshots floating menu.
Click Options to open another menu in which we’re going to check the Timer section. The Timer section has three options: Off, 5 Seconds, and 10 Seconds. If Off is selected, Screenshots will be captured immediately on Mac. To set a screenshot timer on Mac, choose 5 seconds or 10 seconds . This will add a five or ten second delay to every screenshot you take, and you’ll see a countdown in a small floating menu on your screen.
Note that this timer remains in place until you disable it. If you only want to add a timer this time, you can do that too. Press Command + Shift + 5 again and select Options . Now uncheck the Remember last selection under Options . This will ensure that the screenshot timers are only added for the next screenshot you take. The screenshots will then be taken again immediately.
However, Remember Last Choice is an incredibly handy option because it allows your Mac to remember your screenshot settings. This is why we highly recommend leaving it enabled.
While you’re messing around with the screenshot options on your Mac, you might consider adjusting a couple more useful options to change the default location where screenshots are saved and use a nifty trick to add a mouse pointer to your screenshots .