How to take timed screenshots on the Mac

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TekRevue:

The first step to taking timed screenshots on the Mac is to launch the Grab program. To do so, open your Applications folder, and then find the subfolder labeled “Utilities.” Inside the utilities folder is the Mac’s built-in screenshot application called Grab.app.

Double-click on Grab.app to open it, and you’ll see its menus appear across the top of your screen in the Menu Bar. The Grab app allows you to take standard screenshots like the ones detailed in our previous article, but the real magic is its ability to take timed screenshots on a countdown delay. You’ll find this option in Capture > Timed Screen.

I’m sure a lot of you already knew this but I didn’t even know there was a Grab app on my Mac.



13 thoughts on “How to take timed screenshots on the Mac”

  2. Not only is there an app, and not only has it been there since the NeXT days, but I believe some of the files within the app package are actually straight from NeXT – things like icon artwork. Or this was certainly the case until recently.

  4. Oh my gosh thanks for this. I had totally forgotten that it’s a standard app. After transitioning to a new Mac was really frustrated trying to recall the name of the app. Thought I was losing my mind when I couldn’t find it on the App Store or from a web search.

  8. I had forgotten about this too. I have been using an app called SnapNDrag that does timed captures with probably a few more features.

  9. It gets updated periodically. Don’t make stuff up. Try commenting from an informed place rather than knee-jerk cynicism.

  10. It was perhaps a somewhat flippant remark but I don’t think I am really making stuff up. I have been an Apple user since the Apple ][ and for the most part been happy with my choice, especially in the period between acquiring a 17 inch Macbook Pro in 2006 and my Macbook Air in 2013. The company really looked as if it were serious about making great software – it was Aperture that persuaded me that it was worth buying the Macbook and a 30 inch cinema display to go with it. The iWork suite look promising and Final Cut Pro X although a break from the past made sense and was improved in response to the criticisms.

    I started to worry as the UI of successive OS updates became more minimal and fashion led at the expense of usability (eg removing color from the sidebar icons) and ever more IOS-like. Losing Aperture and the tardiness of updates to other stuff – Pages etc. but above all the continuing iCloud problems and the clinging to the egregious iTunes really started to bother me in the last three years.

    Accepting the inevitable compromises, I have in the last year, turned more and more to Dropbox, Google and Microsoft to solve what appear to be the very obvious deficiencies in Apple’s software.

    My concerns and annoyances have been mainly to do with software and I have had few issues with hardware until now (when it is clear that my early 2009 Mac Pro’s days are numbered and the current version is pretty but in my, maybe cynical view, another example of why Jony Ive should be shown the door or at least restrained severely in what he can do) because I do believe that Apple has not only ignored the people who want/need modern top-drawer software but now, apparently the hardware too – judging by the latest pantomime with the laptops.

    If Windows weren’t such a simply awful OS to use – compared with Mac OS, I would switch in a heartbeat. At least for the time being Apple does let me run Parallels and a Windows VM for the stuff I can’t live without.

    So I feel that my comment about Grab was most definitely from an “informed place” albeit a trifle harsh – after all, it’s hardly state of the art. If not exactly abandoned it’s definitely not loved. As to its knee-jerk nature, it’s more like a few years of festering disappointment boiling over.

  12. To a degree I agree with many of your comments.
    But as to how they relate to Grab specifically, less so.

    Grab was important when it was first introduced and became much less important as time went by, when using keyboard shortcuts became easier to use and more available.
    In this case, at least where Grab is concerned, I disagree that it’s abondonware. It’s more like becoming obsoleteware, but still has some life in it and a few tricks up its sleeve.

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