screenshot shift-command-4 problem

Andy O wrote:

hi guys, lately, big sur has been causing this glitch which i can't fix.

shift-command-4 (or 5 for that matter) - i select the area to capture, and the small thumbnail appears in the bottom right of my MBP

i click on it, select "preview" with the icon (square with up arrow) and NOTHING HAPPENS.

i repeat the exercise and then preview opens up normally with the screenshot. never used to do this. very annoying.

i have tried turning off preview in iCloud and that doesn't fix the problem.

HELP!

Make some changes—

Shift Command 5 >>Options

Take screenshots or screen recordings on Mac - Apple Support

When clicking on the screenshot in the lower right can corner of the window one gets this markup window and toolbar.

I do not see a Preview button in the toolbar. Is this the window you're referring to.

Yes it has been noted that if Preview is not yet running it will start but not open the screenshot. That is why you see it work the second time around. The workaround is to keep Preview running (actually I only learned this from another thread; since I always have Preview, I would not have noticed this glitch).

By the way, instead of clicking and selecting Preview, you can set screenshots to open in Preview directly. Much quicker (but you still have to have Preview running).

It's something macOS has done since Catalina.

When you take such a screen shot, it appears as a floating thumbnail, as you know. But if you wait about five seconds, it then finally gets saved to the desktop (or wherever you have the default location set). No idea why Apple thought this delay was necessary.

This delay occurs only if the user checked the option to “show floating thumbnails” and allows one to click the thumbnail and use the editing features of the Screenshot application. If there is no floating thumbnail then there is no delay either.

Anyway, that was not the point that the OP was making. The the thing is that if you click Share->Preview and Preview is not already running, it will start but NOT open the screenshot. Likewise, if has selected Preview as the destination (instead of, say, Desktop) then again if you take a screenshot and Preview was not already running… same thing.

Kurt Lang wrote:

When you take such a screen shot, it appears as a floating thumbnail, as you know. But if you wait about five seconds, it then finally gets saved to the desktop (or wherever you have the default location set). No idea why Apple thought this delay was necessary.

It's so that users have time to click on it to annotate the screenshot. But Apple should put in the Options the option to bypass that delay and save to the Desktop immediately.

Old Toad wrote:

But Apple should put in the Options the option to bypass that delay and save to the Desktop immediately.

Luis Sequeira 1 already touched on that. in the "shift+cmd+5" options, if you de-select "show floating thumbnail", the screenshot goes immediately to "desktop" or wherever else your "save to" is set.

Ah, so it has a purpose. 🙂

Luis noted: This delay occurs only if the user checked the option to “show floating thumbnails”…

Except, I've never checked that option (leroydouglas' screen shot shows the delay set to None). The 5 second delay has to be the default, not user selected, because that's what the OS does if you install macOS on an empty drive/partition.

Wow. I missed Luis' post on that and the option in Screenshots. Since I usually annotate I never looked for it in the Options. But there it is.

Thanks for reminding me.

you're welcome. but thanks to Luis for his post because i had no idea what the "floating thumbnail" meant. so when i noticed it long ago in my recording options i never chose to have it selected. :)