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On the Mac, how can I take a screen shot of a window that includes the parts that are off-screen and need scrolling to become visible?

The built-in Grab application can capture individual windows, but it only includes the parts that are on-screen at the moment.

Clarification: By "off-screen" I mean parts that are in the window, but are not visible, because the window has scrollbars. I do not mean parts of the window that are simply off-screen because of how the window is positioned (of course, I want those, too).

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closed as off-topic by Mokubai Aug 9 at 7:38



We now have Software Recommendations Stack Exchange for questions like this one ;) –  nidunc Jun 9 at 17:54

9 Answers 9

up vote 5 down vote accepted

LittleSnapper will capture whole web pages, but not capture scrolled window contents in applications such as Finder.

Here is a website with 6 Screenshot Utilities (including LittleSnapper and some others that will capture whole pages).

There is a utility specifically for Finder listings called Print Window.

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Little Snapper looks nice, but it is 40 USD. On the other page you mentioned I found the Screengrab Firefox extension, which works splendidly for me (I wanted to capture a web site). screengrab.org –  Thilo Sep 12 '09 at 5:27

While Little Snapper can take a picture of an entire web page, and Layers can capture every element on your screen (including stuff that’s hidden by other windows in front of it)—it’s unlikely you will find an application that can take a picture of the off-screen regions of a window.

The reason is that many applications don’t draw the off-screen portion until it’s needed. Often that part of the display isn’t even rendered until you scroll it into view. So a theoretical “whole window” snapper would capture a lot of blank or undefined areas.

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That sounds reasonable. In my case, I needed to capture a web site, so I went with the Screengrab Firefox extension: screengrab.org –  Thilo Sep 12 '09 at 5:26
Layers 1.1 also has "capture whole web pages" as a new feature. –  Thilo Sep 13 '09 at 5:32
+1 Layers looks cool, although I can't think of a reason I'd have any use for it. :-) –  hanleyp Sep 20 '09 at 23:38

If you just want to grab the output of a webpage as an image you can check out webkit2png or Paprazzi, a GUI similar in practice to webkit2png. Little Snapper does this as well.

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[Necro-Nitpick: Paparazzi! isn't technically a GUI for webkit2png; it's just based on the ideas and basic methods webkit2png uses.] –  Wevah Oct 23 '09 at 21:06
@Wevah: My bad. Edited to reflect this. –  Chealion Oct 23 '09 at 22:06

Snagit is the only software I've found for the mac that can do this for scrolling application windows as well as web pages.

There is a pretty good tutorial available, but basically when you are making a capture you can click on the vertical scrolling button and it will manually scroll the application window and piece together all the shots to make a comprehensive shot - very helpful!

Hope this helps!

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Works for Finder, doesn't work for the terminal. 50$ –  Tvaroh Jun 8 at 13:10
It works just fine for me with iTerm2, which is a superior terminal replacement. I would love a cheaper option but this is the only thing that I've found that works in most scrollable applications. –  Matt Sanders Jun 11 at 7:24

In any browser, you can do File->Print. Then select PDF->Save as PDF...

Most web site don't have a special "Print" CSS, so the result in the PDF is reasonably equivalent to what you see.

To convert to another format, open the PDF with and Save as... you can select in a good list of formats (TIFF, PNG, GIF, JPEG...)

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The question was not only about browsers (though, in the comments the questioner indeed indicated that's all that's needed). Most normal windows don't have a print option, hence no Save as PDF either. For browsers, even when there's a CSS for media="print" then a PDF (at least one created in Safari or OmniWeb on a Mac) has the additional advantage that links remain clickable. A disadvantage --for some usage-- will be the pagination though. Saving an image from a PDF often only yields an image of one specific page, not of the whole document. –  Arjan Sep 12 '09 at 12:02
I tried "Save as PDF", but it does not like good at all. There is pagination, background images are missing, embedded Flash does not show... –  Thilo Sep 13 '09 at 0:18
Despite the clickable links in Safari and OmniWeb, "Save as PDF" is more like "Save the printed copy to PDF". So, any missing background (and maybe the Flash as well) is probably caused by some browser setting for printing. By default, often background colours and images are not printed. (Of course, there's also a small chance the website defines a print style sheet that disables those.) Likewise one can often change the headers and footers. –  Arjan Sep 14 '09 at 8:15

Shift-Cmd-4, then press the spacebar.

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Did not work. This just captured the current window as shown on the screen (not so off-screen bits).Added a clarification to my question. –  Thilo Sep 12 '09 at 4:26

For Firefox centric usage, Awesome Screenshot addon is pretty great and allows snapping entire web pages.

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This drove me crazy for a while, too. But here's how you do it in little snapper:

  1. Open the web page you want to capture
  2. Click on the LittleSnapper icon in the toolbar at the top of your screen (looks like a camera lens)
  3. Select 'Open current website in LittleSnapper' (I've found that this works for Safari but not Chrome)
  4. In the LittleSnapper browser, click the camera icon to 'Snap the current webpage'
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I think you could use some free web tools to make the snapshot. I usually use Capture Full Page to capture the full webpage via URL. There's also a new tool named Web page Screen Capture which not only does the same job but provides extreme editing functions. Both tools are quite simple to go with, you just need to enter the URL of a page and then choose the resolution and image format.

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