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How to take a timed screenshot in macOS

UI

MacOS Mojave introduced a new screenshot interface with lots of options. One of them being the ability to set up a fixed timer to grab screenshots.

  1. Bring up the screenshot utility by pressing Shift + ⌘ + 5 or by pressing ⌘ + Space and looking for “screenshot.app”
  2. Once in the Screenshot utility, click on Options and select one of the three commands: None, 5 Seconds or 10 Seconds.

Terminal

I recently found out you can also take screenshots using the terminal:

screencapture -C -T10 Desktop/screenshot.png

Here’s a list of options from the help screen:

  -c         force screen capture to go to the clipboard
  -b         capture Touch Bar - non-interactive modes only
  -C         capture the cursor as well as the screen. only in non-interactive modes
  -d         display errors to the user graphically
  -i         capture screen interactively, by selection or window
               control key - causes screen shot to go to clipboard
               space key   - toggle between mouse selection and
                             window selection modes
               escape key  - cancels interactive screen shot
  -m         only capture the main monitor, undefined if -i is set
  -D<display> screen capture or record from the display specified. -D 1 is main display, -D 2 secondary, etc.
  -o         in window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window
  -p         screen capture will use the default settings for capture. The files argument will be ignored
  -M         screen capture output will go to a new Mail message
  -P         screen capture output will open in Preview or QuickTime Player if video
  -I         screen capture output will open in Messages
  -B<bundleid> screen capture output will open in app with bundleid
  -s         only allow mouse selection mode
  -S         in window capture mode, capture the screen not the window
  -J [style]  sets the starting of interfactive capture
               selection       - captures screen in selection mode
               window          - captures screen in window mode
               video           - records screen in selection mode
  -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 include windows attached to selected windows
  -r         do not add dpi meta data to image
  -l<windowid> capture this windowsid
  -R<x,y,w,h> capture screen rect
  -v        capture video recording of the screen
  -V<seconds> limits video capture to specified seconds
  -g        captures audio during a video recording using default input.
  -G<id>    captures audio during a video recording using audio id specified.
  -k        show clicks in video recording mode
  -U        Show interactive toolbar in interactive mode
  -u        present UI after screencapture is complete. files passed to command line will be ignored
  files   where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen