How to Take Full Web Page Screen Shots on Mac the Easy Way
Need to take a full web page screen shot on the Mac? There’s a very easy way to do it, but it does not include using the Mac screenshot tools since the feature is not currently available in macOS. Not to worry though, as we have a very easy approach to capture full page screenshots of websites.
The simplest way to take full page scrolling screenshots on a Mac is, currently, to use the Firefox web browser. Firefox offers the most direct way on the Mac, though you can also take full page screenshots on Mac with Safari, and with Chrome too, and even with paid third party tools.
How to Take Full Page Screen Capture on Mac with Firefox
Get FireFox and install it on the Mac (it’s free) if you haven’t done so already
- Open FireFox on the Mac
- Go to the webpage you want to take a full webpage screenshot of
- Scroll down through the entire web page (this is necessary to load images that are lazy-loading)
- Click on the “…” button in the address bar of Firefox and then choose “Take a Screenshot” from the drop-down menu
- Choose “Save full page”
- Choose to ‘Copy’ or “Download” the full webpage screenshot, copy will copy it to your clipboard, whereas download saves the full page screenshot as a JPG image in your set downloads folder
(On the latest versions of Firefox, you may be able to right-click on a web page and choose “Take Screenshot”, or use command + shift + S keyboard shortcut)
There you have it, your full webpage screenshot has been captured and stored either in the clipboard ready to paste elsewhere, or as an image file saved that you can do what you’d like with.
Taking fullpage screenshots is very commonly needed by web developers, designers, editors, project managers, and just about any other web heavy job.
Currently on the Mac, there is not a super simple approach for taking full page screenshots like on iPhone and iPad that is activated automatically when screenshotting within Safari, but perhaps in a future version that feature will exist.
Below is the (large but resized to be smaller) sample screenshot, you can click on it to load the full size if you’re curious to see what it will look like. It’s a page captured from your favorite website, https://osxdaily.com:
There are other ways to take full webpage screenshots on Mac, but at the moment none are quite as simple as Firefox offers. You can take full page captures with the Terminal, Safari, Chrome, and using third party apps and tools too.
If you know of another method or approach to taking full webpage screenshots on Mac, share with us in the comments.
How to do it in Safari? Is here to way save the full page? Thx
The user interface has changed significantly in Firefox 89 released on June 1, 2021.
In other words, the content of the article introduced is for Firefox 88 or earlier.
I’m using the latest firefox and it works as described, maybe some of you don’t use the developer tools?
Take screenshots on Firefox | Firefox Help
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/take-screenshots-firefox#firefox:mac:fx95
The free app Paparazzi works well:
https://derailer.org/paparazzi/
One advantage of Paparazzi: you can determine the boundaries of your image. So you can get, say, a full-page ad from an old magazine in Google Books without getting the entire magazine.
Yeah, Firefox 95 has no dots, and the other tip above is only a cut/copy/paste button and does nothing in this regard.
Bust.
I’m using the latest version of Firefox but those 3 dots you refer to are not there. Just the icon for Reader and the Favorites icon. So can’t use the option you refer to.
In latest Firefox for Mac (version 95.0) just Right-Click somewhere on a webpage and then choose “Take Screenshot” from the menu…
Why not use the built-in function macs have always had? Keyboard shortcuts, screenshots can already do that with a single click. you can even change the desired output format. (png, jpg, etc.).
I have no idea WHY anyone thinks the feature isn’t available anymore, because it IS!!!???!!!
Screenshot and recording options are at the bottom of the list. and Whole screen is the very first choice. and Capture window is the second
The typical screenshot tools work to capture what is currently on screen.
If you want to take a full webpage screenshot, including what is not on screen but is still part of the same web page, you have to use an approach like what is discussed here.
Command shift 4 brings up crasshairs, drag across what you want a screenshot of. Done.
Command shift 3 takes a full screen shot. Done.
They show up on your desktop.
Someone needs to educate these newbies at OSX Daily on basic MacOS functionality.
Command shift 3 or 4 only take screenshots of VISIBLE areas. Don’t call out “newbies” when you yourself can’t even read the thread.
Thank you for the Firefox solution for webpage screenshots!
You mentioned there’s a way to do it using Terminal.app as well, and I’d love a description of that. I think I’d prefer Terminal as it’s Safari and Terminal I use most and those are built in tools.
It’s totally easy in Safari. Just go to File > Export as PDF… and save the entire thing as a PDF wherever you like.
@Jim
And with this method, you can also capture the screen in reader mode and get a clean page with no ads.
Thanks Jim! I’m running Safari 15.4 and your solution works. I didn’t expect the pdf to capture the info that was ‘off screen’ but it does work.
Safari does have “Export as PDF” from the “File” menu.
This perhaps doesn’t provide a png screenshot but I would consider a PDF every bit as easy to use or share without having to install another browser.
As usual, there are several ways on a Mac to do the same thing. Export as PDF works fine.
You can also invoke the print command and choose Save as PDF, which gives you the option to scale the size and to choose how much of the page you want to save. If the print dialog says it would take 8 pages to print the entire web page, you can choose to save just the first 3, or 4, or whatever, as a PDF.
I am running Firefox, the most recent and I don’t see the “…” at the top! How did you get it to appear?
You can always take screen shots or window shots with the built-in Apple tools and then put the pages together or simply in order so you can “quicklook” at them in the order you save them. Putting them into a folder with a descriptive name, gives you a small book – folder – of info you have captured.
My Firefox (latest) doesn’t show the three dots menu…
The following method is a little bit involved but it is built-in Chrome.
From the ‘View’ menu select ‘Developer’,
…and from the sub-menu select ‘Developer Tools’.
A new window will appear inside the current window.
On the upper left corner click on the icon that looks something like a tablet and a mobile phone device (…the second from the left).
A new bar will appear at the top of the page.
At the rightmost of the bar there is an icon with 3 vertical aligned dots.
Click there and a new drop-down menu will appear.
Select ‘Capture full size screenshot’ form the menu and let it do its thing.
Then you will be prompted with the usual (OS specific) window to confirm the download and save the screenshot.
Great tip, but in what I think is the latest Firefox version, 95.0, it’s slightly different. At least on my Mac, that little “…” more menu isn’t there, or maybe I just don’t have enough buttons crammed on to my toolbar.
Right click (or CTRL-click) on the Firefox menu bar, select Customize Toolbar, then select the icon that looks like a little pair of scissors and a dotted rectangle, drag that to wherever you want it on the toolbar, click Done, then use that little icon for the rest of the procedure as outlined.
Thank you!! That worked brilliantly. Once the scissor icon is there, it’s easy to download a PNG of the page. I couldn’t get it to crop; but that’s easily solved by changing the browser window width prior to taking screenshot.
ll, MY Mac Firefox v94.0.1 does not have the 3 dots you refer to. It has the hamburger icon but that does not have your reference to Take A Screenshot.
My Firefox is up to date and I don’t have the 3 dots in the address bar. I have been looking for a way to save a scrolling screen shot so would love to know how to do it in Firefox.
To grab a screenshot on OSX simply press command, shift, 5 and it will do the screenshot. It also allows you to crop and select sections of the shot to print.
You can use Apple’s Screenshot app, which is very versatile:
Applications > Utilities > Screenshot.app
Screenshot.app is quite good, but it does not allow for the full scrolling capture of a page screenshot unfortunately. I suspect a future version will include that feature, given that it is in iOS and iPadOS.