How to Capture a Single Window on Mac

Sharing a window is awkward when the wallpaper and half of another app come along for the ride. Dragging a selection to the window’s edges is fiddly, and you’re always a pixel off.

macOS already captures window by window.

The built-in way

1. Press ⌘⇧4 (command+shift+4). The cursor turns into a crosshair.
2. Press space. The cursor turns into a camera.
3. Move over the window you want — it highlights — and click. Only that window is captured.

Menus, the Dock and the menu bar work the same way. Hover an open menu, press space, and you get just the menu.

Dropping the shadow

By default the capture includes a big drop shadow, which adds a lot of empty margin. Hold ⌥ (option) while you click and the shadow is left out.

To drop it every time:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

Run it again with -bool false to bring it back.

Floatie’s window capture

Floatie captures a window with ⌃⌥2 (control+option+2) (Pro). It goes straight into window-picking, no space bar in between, and whether the shadow is included is a setting you make once.

The captured window becomes a floating shot rather than a file. Park it beside the window you’re working in, copy the text out of it, or mark it up and share it without saving anything.

When it doesn’t work

• No window highlights: check the cursor actually turned into a camera after the space bar. If not, press ESC and start again.
• Too much empty margin: that’s the shadow. Hold ⌥ as you click.
• A full-screen app won’t isolate: in full screen the window edges are the screen edges, so capturing the whole screen — ⌘⇧1 in Floatie, ⌘⇧3 built in — is quicker.

A clean single window makes a real difference in anything you share. With no background, the person receiving it knows immediately what they’re meant to look at.

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