Disable the Window Shadow on Screen Shots in Mac OS X

May 23, 2011 - 5 Comments

Screen shot without the window shadows in Mac OS X

Ever noticed that there’s a shadow on every screen shot of a window you take in Mac OS X? You can easily turn this off by using the command line:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

You’ll then need to restart SystemUIServer by killing it:

killall SystemUIServer

Now take a screen capture of an individual window using Command+Shift+4 and the screen shot will not include the window shadow.

If you want to revert back and have shadows on individual window screen captures again, use:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false

And again kill SystemUIServer for changes to take effect.

Screenshot with window shadows in Mac OS X

Two other nice screen capture tweaks include changing the screenshot image file type and changing the save location of screenshot files which helps you reduce desktop clutter.

Related articles:

Posted by: William Pearson in Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks

5 Comments

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  1. inket says:

    Using Grab.app is faster and doesn’t involve the Terminal.

    Open Grab, choose Capture -> Window.

  2. [...] OSX Daily kommer med ett litet tips för den som vill välja bort fönsterskuggan tillsvidare. [...]

  3. [...] of disabling the screen shot shadow completely you can take a one-time screen capture minus the shadow by using either the Grab app or by using [...]

  4. jon says:

    I recommend Skitch (http://skitch.com) for screengrabs. It’s now free and owned by Evernote!

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