I'm on Mac Tahoe 26.2 and need my screenshot default to be in jpg. Under screenshot options, the only types to choose from are SDR and HDR.
I'm willing to enter something into the terminal, but I don't want to mess anything up by making up my own command.
MacBook Pro 14″
You're going to need the Terminal for this, but it's not hard.
The command you want is defaults which reads and writes preference settings. Specifically, in this case you want to set the type key to jpeg:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpeg
To revert, just reenter the command with 'png'.
You can also use 'tiff' or 'gif' if you prefer. Oddly, not 'pdf', though.
If you err and type in a bogus format, the image will be saved as PNG, with whatever filename extension you used (so you can just rename the file if needs be).
You might want to backup your existing preferences file first, just to be safe. It's at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
You're going to need the Terminal for this, but it's not hard.
The command you want is defaults which reads and writes preference settings. Specifically, in this case you want to set the type key to jpeg:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpeg
To revert, just reenter the command with 'png'.
You can also use 'tiff' or 'gif' if you prefer. Oddly, not 'pdf', though.
If you err and type in a bogus format, the image will be saved as PNG, with whatever filename extension you used (so you can just rename the file if needs be).
You might want to backup your existing preferences file first, just to be safe. It's at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
Try this: Open the screenshot in Preview. Then Save As... as a jpeg, pdf, or whatever.
If Tahoe 26.2 won't do this, I will have a serious problem also.
Thank you so much! This did the trick.
Is there a way to change screenshot file type default from png to jpg?
