Applicable OSX Versions: Tiger and Leopard (That I know of!)
Because I’m a MAJOR keyboard junkie, I tend to find little nuggets of hidden OSX fun from time-to-time. This is just such an occasion. While looking at the Dashboard today to see what time it was in Macgasm-land (aka Ottawa) it occurred to me to try a screenshot — Apple-Shift-3 — for no REAL reason other than to see what would happen. I didn’t REALLY expect it to work, but when I heard the familiar “shutter” noise, I quickly jumped to the desktop to find this:
This is by far not the first time that something like this has happened. Often, I feel like Apple reads my mind with these things. Stuff like this is what I’m talking about when I tell people that OSX “just works”.
Ok, that’s a little fanboy-ish, but you see what I mean.
Of course, I’m not entirely sure how useful this will be, although off the top of my head I’d say it could be very useful if you happen to be a Dashboard Widget developer. Luckily, I’m geeky enough not to really care how useful things are, as long as they’re obscure and a bit fun.
Comments with similar keyboard goodness are most welcome!





















June 19th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Easter egg! If you zoom in a bit you'll notice that me and Josh in iChat learning how to calculate time across time zones.. It's harder than it sounds.. really!!
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June 20th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Another cool screenshot key combination is Apple-Shift-4. That will give you cross-hairs to select a portion of the page that interests you.
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June 20th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Thanks for the tip. Isn't there one for just grabbing the current window?
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June 21st, 2008 at 11:30 am
I'm just taking pictures of everything now. pretty awesome.
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June 21st, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Haha, you've got to love OS X. Every time I stumble across some new “feature” I beat it to death.
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June 22nd, 2008 at 1:13 am
I think you have to use Grab.app to do just a window.
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June 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Apple-Shift-4 gives you a crosshair that lets you select a certain area of the screen to capture, and Apple-Shift-4 then Space captures the active window. If you want to capture your desktop or a window directly to the clipboard, press Apple-Shift-Ctrl-3 to get the whole desktop, Apple-Shift-Ctrl-4 to get the crosshair, and Apple-Shift-Ctrl-4 then Space to get the active window.
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June 24th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Thanks a ton for the comment. I had a hunch that it was possible to do the active window, but I'm constantly being told that it was only a grab thing.
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