How to crop a screenshot on a Mac
Short answer: to crop a screenshot you have already saved, open it in Preview, drag a rectangle over the part you want to keep, and press Command-K. To crop one you just took, click the thumbnail in the corner to open Markup and use its Crop tool before you ever save a file. Either way, cropping permanently removes everything outside the frame, which is exactly why it only works when the thing you want gone is at the edge. Here is every route, the keyboard shortcut, how to crop and copy in one go, and the one case where cropping is the wrong tool.
The fastest crop: trim it the moment you capture
The quickest crop happens before the screenshot exists. When you press Shift-Command-4 and drag the crosshair, macOS only captures the region you draw, so dragging a tight box around the part you care about is cropping at the source, with no editing afterward. If you grabbed more than you meant to, click the thumbnail that flashes in the bottom-right corner for a few seconds and the shot opens in Markup, where the Crop tool lets you drag the handles to set a new frame. Saving from the thumbnail or copying from it means the full-size original never lands on disk.
For the full set of capture shortcuts and what each one grabs, the complete guide to taking a screenshot on a Mac covers them. This page is about what happens to the frame afterward.
How to crop a screenshot after it is saved, in Preview
For a screenshot already sitting on your Desktop, Preview is the cropper. Double-click the file to open it, then keep what you want in three steps:
- Drag a rectangle over the part of the image you want to keep. The selection, not the part you want gone, defines the new frame.
- Choose Tools then Crop, or press Command-K. Preview discards everything outside the rectangle.
- Press Command-S to save over the file, or use File then Duplicate first if you want to keep the original full-size shot as well.
If Markup is open in Preview, the Crop tool there works the same way, drag the handles and confirm. One thing that is not cropping: Tools then Adjust Size changes the image dimensions or resolution, so it shrinks or enlarges the whole picture rather than trimming the edges. Reach for Crop when you want less of the picture, and Adjust Size when you want the same picture at a different size.
Every route to a cropped screenshot
Mac gives you four places to crop, depending on where the screenshot is and whether you have saved it yet.
| Where you are | How to crop |
|---|---|
| Taking the shot | Press Shift-Command-4 and drag a tight box, so only that region is captured |
| Capture thumbnail | Click the corner thumbnail to open Markup, then use the Crop tool and drag the handles |
| Saved file in Preview | Drag a selection, then Tools then Crop, or press Command-K |
| Quick Look | Press Space on a selected file, open Markup, and use the same Crop tool without fully opening anything |
How to crop a screenshot and copy it
To crop and copy in one pass, crop first by whichever route fits, then copy the result instead of saving it. In Preview, after you press Command-K, choose Edit then Select All and Edit then Copy, or press Command-A then Command-C, and the cropped image is on the clipboard ready to paste with Command-V. In Markup from the thumbnail, the share and copy controls send the cropped shot out without writing a file.
There is also a way to skip the saved file entirely: add Control to a capture shortcut, so Control-Shift-Command-4 copies the region you drag straight to the clipboard. That is crop-and-copy in a single keystroke when you already know the frame you want. Once it is on the clipboard, pasting the screenshot into a message or document is just Command-V.
When cropping is the wrong tool
Cropping genuinely deletes the pixels outside the frame, which is its real strength and its limit. When the thing you want gone is at the edge of the shot, an extra browser tab, a sidebar, a notification, cropping it away is clean and final, with nothing left behind to recover. The trouble starts when the thing you want gone sits in the middle of something you need to keep, like a customer email in the body of a screen you are sharing for a different reason. Crop tightly enough to remove it and you take the surrounding context with it; crop loosely and the sensitive detail is still in the frame.
That is the difference between cropping and redacting, and it decides which tool you reach for. The trade-off between cropping and redacting a screenshot is worth reading if you find yourself cropping by reflex to hide something. If your goal is to clean up the framing rather than hide anything, the wider guide to editing and marking up a screenshot covers arrows, text and the rest of the Markup tools alongside cropping.
For the in-the-middle case, this is the gap I built ScrubShot to fill. It captures with a shortcut and has a Crop tool like the built-ins, but it also has a Scrub tool that pixelates a selected area straight into the image, irreversibly, so you can leave the surrounding context in place and still take out the one thing that should not travel. All of it runs on your Mac, with nothing uploaded. If hiding sensitive detail is the actual job, redacting a screenshot on a Mac walks through it.
FAQ
- How do I crop a screenshot on a Mac after saving it?
- Open the saved file in Preview by double-clicking it, drag a rectangle over the part you want to keep, then choose Tools then Crop or press Command-K. Preview keeps what is inside your selection and discards the rest. Save with Command-S to overwrite the file, or use File then Duplicate first if you want to keep the original full-size shot.
- What is the keyboard shortcut to crop a screenshot on a Mac?
- In Preview the crop shortcut is Command-K. Make a rectangular selection over the area you want to keep first, then press Command-K and Preview trims the image to that selection. Without a selection the shortcut does nothing, so the order is select, then Command-K.
- How do I crop a screenshot and copy it to the clipboard?
- Crop it first, in Markup from the capture thumbnail or in Preview with Command-K, then with the cropped image on screen choose Edit then Select All and Edit then Copy, or press Command-A then Command-C. The trimmed image goes to the clipboard so you can paste it straight into a message or document with Command-V, without saving a separate file.
- Can I crop a screenshot on a Mac without Preview?
- Yes. If you click the thumbnail that flashes in the corner right after you capture, the shot opens in Markup, which has its own Crop tool, so you never touch Preview or save a file. You can also crop at capture time: when you press Shift-Command-4 and drag the crosshair, only the region you draw is captured, which is cropping before the image even exists.
Try it
ScrubShot is a Mac app that crops like the built-in tools and adds the one thing they miss: a Scrub tool that pixelates sensitive areas into the image so they cannot be recovered, all on-device. Press the shortcut, crop the frame, scrub out anything private in the middle, then copy or save. There is a free 7-day trial with no card required. After that it is $30 once, with lifetime updates and no subscription.