Screenshot app resolution higher than display?

Apparently you have the resolution scaled to 1680 x 1050. 2x that is 3360 x 2100. You could down sample the screen shot in Preview but you would end up losing quality. What you are seeing is normal.

See this explanation on Reddit from a few years ago…

2018 15" MBP is not 2880x1800, It's 3360x2100

Alex Zachopoulos wrote:

Any tricks out there to actually capture what the true screen output is?

What do you mean by the "true screen output"? Each model has different display hardware. For each, there are a limited number of combinations of possible scaled resolutions. You haven't said what model you have or what resolution you are using. Furthermore, what is actually driving your display is the GPU. What you are seeing is the internal display size in the GPU. It is very difficult to get or even describe the "screen output". But is is much easier to identify the screen input. That's what your screenshot is. So take your screenshot and do what the computer does - rescale it into the size you need, taking into consideration its dimensions to ensure that each "pixel" is still square.

The following will tell you the real screen resolution whether on a 32-inch 4K UHD display, or a new 16-inch M1 MBP.

Copy/paste into a programmer's editor to preserve the Python indents, save, mark executable, and run from the Terminal as shown above:

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: UTF-8

# display current screen resolution

from AppKit import NSScreen
import sys


def main():
    for ascreen in NSScreen.screens():
        frame_pixels = ascreen.convertRectToBacking_(ascreen.frame())
        print("{:.0f} x {:.0f}\t{:40s}".format(frame_pixels.size.width,
                                               frame_pixels.size.height,
                                               ascreen.localizedName()))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main())

I don't know if it will help but, here are the specs for my M1 MacBook Air…

Whatever scaled resolution I choose a screen shot will be 2x that.

That is the display’s resolution.

etresoft wrote:

That is the display’s resolution.

Not exactly. The display resolution is 2880x1800.

Different Mac, same principle.

Or… you can look it up. 🧠

A lot of clicks in a web browser to look up that information…

> About This Mac > Displays tells it without lifting a web browser.

But I prefer to code…

I was going to mention System Information… but, I don't like coding. If I did, I would still be using Linux.