How to remove the shadow from window screenshots in macOS
I take lots of screenshots for my blog posts or courses.
I typically use cmd-shift-4 and then I press the spacebar to screenshot the whole application window.
Like this:
By default macOS adds that drop shadow which makes it look pretty nice.
If you want you can remove it using this command in the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true ; killall SystemUIServer
Here’s the same screenshot without drop shadow:
Add it back with:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false ; killall SystemUIServer
I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer, download them all at $0 cost by joining my newsletter
- C Handbook
- Command Line Handbook
- CSS Handbook
- Express Handbook
- Git Cheat Sheet
- Go Handbook
- HTML Handbook
- JS Handbook
- Laravel Handbook
- Next.js Handbook
- Node.js Handbook
- PHP Handbook
- Python Handbook
- React Handbook
- SQL Handbook
- Svelte Handbook
- Swift Handbook
JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025