How do you configure a Mac to save screenshots to a specific directory?

By Joel Dare - Written April 26, 2023

I take a lot of screenshots. Instead of dropping those on the Desktop, which is the current Mac default, I want to put those into a Screenshots folder inside my home folder. To do that I need to start by creating the Screenshots directory.

Open Finder and select Go to Folder… from the Go menu.
Type ~ and press enter.
Create the Screenshots folder.
Drag the Screenshots folder into the Favorites list in Finder.

In addition, you may want to save your home folder into Favorites.

Open Finder and select Go to Folder… from the Go menu.
Type /Users and press enter.
Drag your username over to Favorites.

Finally, to configure your Mac to save screenshots to a directory follow these steps:

Open the Terminal app. You’ll find it in the Utilities folder under Applications.
Run the following command in the Terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /path/to/new/folder

Replace “/path/to/new/folder” with the actual path to the folder you created in the first step. You can drag and drop the folder into the Terminal window to get its path.
Press the Enter key to execute the command. You won’t see any output in the Terminal window.
Type the following command to apply the changes:

killall SystemUIServer

Press the Enter key to execute the command. This will restart the SystemUIServer, which is responsible for handling screenshots.

From now on, when you take a screenshot using the keyboard shortcuts (Command-Shift-3 for a full-screen screenshot, or Command-Shift-4 for a selection screenshot), the screenshot will be saved to the folder you specified.

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