Lost screenshots with El Capitan

Relaunching the Finder solved this issue for me; the wayward screen shots appeared on the Desktop immediately after relaunching the Finder. No restart required.

Apple menu > Force Quit > click Finder > click Relaunch

Good luck.

Hello Bruce,
I understand that you are taking screenshots but not seeing them show up on your desktop. Let's see if we can find them.
When creating a screenshot, they are titled Screen Shot (date and time).png and then all you have to do is search using Spotlight and Start with Screen Shot. You will then see a list of items, look for an option that says Show All in Finder... and a Finder Window will open with those search results.
Another thing to look out for is when taking a screenshot, make sure that you are not accidentally hitting the Control key when hitting the other keys. When you do that the screenshot will go to the clipboard instead of to your desktop. For more details, take a look at the articles below for more details.
Mac Basics: Spotlight helps you find what you're looking for
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204014
How to take a screenshot on your Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201361​
Take care

norm 123, this is an actual problem. since upgrading to el capitan screen shots sometimes will not show up anywhere until after a restart. after restart all the ones you took show up. and new ones show up immediately again for awhile.

did you find where your screenshots were being saved?

this article shows you how to change the default location for screenshots.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/01/26/change-the-screenshot-save-file-location-in-mac-o s-x/

Eau Rouge wrote:

did you find where your screenshots were being saved?

this article shows you how to change the default location for screenshots.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/01/26/change-the-screenshot-save-file-location-in-mac-o s-x/

The problem with your reference is it is dated 2011.

This does not take into account the System Integrity Protection (SIP) of the new El Capitan, and you give no reference to this change and what it takes to carry forward.

Yes I know it is dated 2011, but is working for me in El Capitan

I was hitting control. Cheers for that tip!

Same problem. Super annoying that I have to restart to get the screen shots to appear.

Help! I can't get screenshots to work at all-- the shutter sound is not happening, though I get the crosshairs. I have used Command Control Shift 3 and 4, and Command Shift 3 and 4, and nothing saves to the clipboard or desktop.

I have gone in to the keyboard preferences and tried to reset the key code. I looked in the directory for screen capture and didn't find anything. I have restarted Finder. I have restarted the computer. I used spotlight to look for screen shots and found nothing except what I screenshot 2 days ago. HELP!

I had this problem too. I found that if you're using Dropbox, and you've set the option "Share screenshots using Dropbox" (on the Import tab of the Dropbox preferences), then the screenshots will no longer be placed in the Desktop folder, they'll be in (YourUserName)/Dropbox/Screenshots.

As a previous poster mentioned, I did a spotlight search for Screen Shots to find this!

I've now created a shortcut to this folder on my Finder left-nav menu so I can easily get to my screenshots.

Spotlight finds the screendump, and when clicking on 'show in finder', they'll appear. As you click on the individual screen dump there - abracadabra: It suddenly pops up on the desktop. Silly fault in Capitan.

This web page solved it for me: How to take a screenshot

Without having to restart, without having to script anything and finally running Dropbox and other external cloud based storages.

Thanks to the guy(s) who did this page and those trying to help us.

Fantastic! TheRealBigGuy, your clue about Dropbox was just what I needed. I turned off that instruction in Dropbox and I've got screenshots back on the Desktop where I prefer them to be. I use screenshots at least daily, so this has stopped me wasting lots of time. Thanks

Hello everyone,

I hope you are fine. I am having a similar problem which is making my life very bothersome since I installed El Capitan.

When I use cmd+shift+4 to capture a screen fragment, it saves into my desktop with twice the size as the original capture. For example, if I capture 100x100 pixels it will be saved in my desktop as a 200x200 image, and I need to use a photo editor to resize it to the original size. And makes it look much worse.

Can you please help? Something I am missing?

Thanks in advance