Overview

The Mac always had a screenshot feature. Pressing ‘cmd-shift-3’ simultaneously would create a screenshot even in System 1. As of OSX, ‘cmd-shift-4’ will also create a screenshot, but with the added benefit that you can crop the area before OSX saves it.

In Panther (10.3) and earlier your Mac saves screenshots in PDF format, in Snow Leopard (10.6) in PNG. In all versions, screenshots are saved to your ‘Desktop’ folder ((Home)/Desktop).

If you had Unix knowhow, nerves of steel and the grim determination to do it mano-a-mano (whatever that is), you always could change file format and save location by entering a string of arcane commands (see ‘’Real’ men do it via terminal’ how do tough it out old-skool-like).

Savescreenie is a frontend that does that for you – without worrying if ‘killall SystemUIServer’ really will only restart the windows server, or if it instead would go about murdering some other processes it doesn’t like.

Key Features:

• Change file format of screen capture to PDF, PNG, JPG, JP2, TIFF, TGA, BMP, PSD, PCT and GIF
• Set the location where OSX saves screenshots
• Select file name base (depending on your OSX version the name base is appended by either a number or a date and time stamp in OSX 10.6, to make sure its unique)

Savescreenie 1.x was first released in 2005. In September of that year, Dan Frakes of (MacWorld/MacUser fame) while surveying screenshot utilities called it “One of the best free utilities for changing just the screenshot format” (note how we conveniently leave out his criticisms).

Now, for it’s 5th anniversary, we have upgraded savescreenie in many ways: it now is a Universal app, it restarts the UI Server automatically, supports additional file formats, allows you to set the save path, and even can change the save file name.

The only thing that remains the same is the price: it’s free (as in beer). If you use it, please remember to smile.