Mac Screenshot Floating Thumbnail Pro Tip

2023-01-25 Tips and Tricks Timothy Patterson

For all you Mac users out there I just discovered a life-changing command in the depths of Google…

After running the command below, when you take a screenshot using any of the built-in macOS mechanisms the thumbnail will now stick around for 30 seconds instead of the 5 second default!

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve taken a screenshot and then had to hurry to find the right app to drag it into only to have it disappear on me. This is native to macOS and is not a third party utility.

To enable, run it from a Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencaptureui "thumbnailExpiration" -float 30 && killall SystemUIServer