How to Take a macOS Window Screenshot Without the Shadow Background

I take a lot of macOS app screenshots for my blog.

The default screenshots look beautiful — whether it’s the entire screen, a selected portion, or a selected window.

One special thing when you capture a macOS window is that it automatically adds a soft shadow around it. It looks good. It looks polished.

Most of the time, I don’t need to remove it.

But in some cases, that shadow really takes up extra space. So I started wondering: is there a way to take a macOS window screenshot without the shadow?

Here’s how I do it.

macOS Window Screen Capture Without Shadow Background

If you’re wondering how to take a macOS window screenshot without the background shadow, just follow these steps:

• Enter Capture Selected Window mode. There are two ways to do this:

  1. Press ⌘ command + shift + 4. You’ll enter Capture Selected Portion mode. Then press space on your keyboard to switch to Capture Selected Window mode.
  2. Open Screenshot.app, or press ⌘ command + shift + 5. Then click Capture Selected Window from the Screenshot toolbar.

• Hover your trackpad or mouse over the window you want to capture.
• Hold ⌥ option and click while the cursor is over the window.
• A new window screenshot without the shadow will be saved to your Desktop.

Here’s an example of a normal screenshot of System Settings with the shadow:

And here’s the same System Settings screenshot without the shadow:

Notice the difference? Very noticeable.

I also noticed that screenshots without the shadow have a smaller file size (which makes sense).

Conclusion

That’s it. It’s a bit of a hassle to remember the shortcut at first.

But once you do, it’s a very useful trick.

Which one do you prefer — screenshots with or without the shadow?

As usual, if you have any questions or a better method, leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading, and see you next time!