How to take a screenshot of one window on a Mac, with or without the shadow

How do I screenshot just one window on a Mac?

1. Press ⌘ ⇧ 4. The pointer turns into crosshairs.
2. Press Space. The pointer turns into a camera and the window under it is highlighted.
3. Click the window you want. The picture is saved to your desktop, or wherever your screenshots go.

You can also press ⌘ ⇧ 5 to open the screenshot toolbar and choose Capture Selected Window, then click a window.

How do I take a window screenshot without the shadow?

Hold ⌥ while you click the window in step 3. The window is captured on its own, with no shadow and no transparent border around it. For a script or a repeated job, the Terminal command does the same with the -o option:

screencapture -o -w ~/Desktop/window.png

-w asks you to pick a window, and -o leaves its shadow out. Both options are listed by screencapture on macOS 27.

How do I copy a window screenshot to the clipboard?

Hold ⌃ as you click the window. Nothing is saved to the desktop; paste it straight into a message or document with ⌘ V. You can hold ⌃ and ⌥ together for a shadowless copy.

Why does my window screenshot include other windows?

Because you dragged a box instead of pressing Space. A dragged box captures whatever sits inside it, including the edges of windows behind. In window mode only the highlighted window is captured, even if another window covers part of it.

Screenshots piling up on the desktop? Change where they are saved. Need a moving picture of one window? See how to record one window.

Checked on 22 October 2026 on a MacBook Air (M1) running macOS 27.0.1: the toolbar label Capture Selected Window and the -o and -w options were read from the system's own screenshot tools.