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Screenshot glitch in OS-X Catalina:

Since I updated, I take a screenshot using shift-comd-5 and once I capture the shot, it leaves the window with the rest of the screen greyed out, same as when I am in process to take the screenshot. The only way I have found to restore my screen is to restart the computer.


  1. How do I stop it from happening?
  2. In the meantime, how do I reset the screen without restarting?


MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 20, 2019 9:46 AM

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Posted on Jan 15, 2020 3:17 PM

Check to see if there's this button in the menu bar. It's be the farthest left icon on the right side:



It appears when I'm doing a recording of the screen or window. Clicking on it stops the recording and clears the window. See if that's what you're experiencing.


12 replies

Jan 23, 2020 4:56 PM in response to jd2020

I finally figured it out. For whatever reason, the Screencapture app defaulted to a video capture rather than a frame capture. What was happening as described - framed area remained white while the rest was greyed out, the app would not respond to commands - was the app was recording a video. I never did discover how to end the recording, and the app may have exceded capacity and frozen. I had to restart the computer to reset everything. Changing the default command in the small strip underneath fixed the issue, returning Screencapture's default to an actual single screen or frame capture. I still don't know how one would actually attempt a running video capture, and that may be beyond my high-end MBP, but I don't care. I'll never use that function. All the talk of preference files, etc, were off target. It was a simple mistake of what default command happened on a 'return' button.

Jan 22, 2020 9:01 AM in response to JCampbel

Log into another user account and see if the problem persists there in Photos. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).


Then boot into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isoloate issues with your Mac) and try from there. Reboot normally and try again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 




Jan 15, 2020 2:57 PM in response to WhoisdoubleA1

Oh yes, I've seen it. It happens to me a lot on a Mac mini running Mojave! It happens so often, i just use the old CMD + SHIFT + 3 or 4. Although I think Screen Capture works correctly on my MacBook Air that came with Mojave.


The capture controls are supposed to go away if you press ESC, but this (often) doesn't seem to work. I've never found a fix that solves this, but to get rid of the gray screen open Activity Monitor and force quit "screencapture".



Jan 22, 2020 5:59 AM in response to dialabrain

'command-shift-5' produced nothing. Using the drop down menu, I unchecked 'remember last selection', then tried screenshot, and got the typical freeze. Screenshot could not be closed, no screenshot menu could be produced, the greyed out area not surrounded by screenshot outline remained, and even 'force quit' showed nothing for screenshot. The only way to escape this is to restart.

Any other suggestions? I already deleted screenshot preferences and got same behavior.

Screenshot glitch in OS-X Catalina:

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