By default, anytime you take a screen capture in Mac OS X it will save the screen shot file to the current users desktop.
You can adjust where Mac OS X saves a captured screenshot to any other location, here is how to do this. we already covered How to create screen shot in OS X and Timed screen shot.
- Launch Terminal and insert this command
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /path/
Replace path with your desired folder. For example, if you want to have the screen shots appear in Documents folder, use this:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Documents/
- For immediately effect of changes use this command:
killall SystemUIServer
So the next time you take a screenshot file will appear at the location you specified.
- You can change the saved screenshot location back to the default setting by specifying the desktop again:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/
- And don’t forget to apply this command for immediatly effect of changes:
killall SystemUIServer
More tutorials about screenshots:
How to create Screenshot (print screen) on OS X 10.9 Mavericks
How to Change the Screen Capture File Format in OS X 10.9 Mavericks
How To Take a Screen Shot via Terminal (Command Line) on OS X 10.9 Mavericks
How to Disable Drop Shadows from Appearing on Window Screen Shots in OS X 10.9 Mavericks
How To Auto-Upload Screenshots With Dropbox & Easily Share Them
Eden says
Anyone have problems getting the default location to change? It doesn’t work on my new macbookair w/ Mavericks. It works fine on my old macbookair w/ Mt Lion
iHash says
I tested on various Macs with OS X Mavericks with no problem. Did you type correct command, maybe you misspelled something.