Change Where Screenshots Are Saved on Your Mac Using a Terminal Command
Mac: Taking screenshots is easy, but if you take them often, leaving them randomly scattered around your desktop is a problem. You can use a third-party app to redirect to where they are stored for you, or even upload them to the cloud, but if you don’t need all of these, this terminal command will save them anywhere you choose.
Greg Munder explains in a post on Medium that he was tired of his screenshots ending up on the desktop, and he also didn’t want to use an app that always worked to move them or copy them to the clipboard. Instead, he created a Screenshots folder in his Documents folder. Then he opened a terminal window and typed:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Documents/Screenshots
After that, he restarted the finder by typing:
killall SystemUIServer
That’s all there is to it. From now on, any screenshots it takes are automatically saved in the Screenshots folder for future use, and it maintains a beautiful clean desktop. Of course, you can replace “~ / Documents / Screenshots” with any folder you choose or create – you can move them all to your Dropbox folder, for example to facilitate sharing. Take a screenshot of the prompt, visit the link below.
Hate how screenshots on Mac are saved to your desktop? | Greg Munder (middle)