How to take a scrolling screenshot on Mac

The short answer: macOS has no built-in way to capture a scrolling page — ⌘⇧5 only grabs what is visible on screen. To capture a whole long page as one image, you need an app that scrolls and stitches for you. ShotScreen does exactly that: press ⌘⇧3, pick the window, and it produces one tall PNG.

Step by step with ShotScreen

1. 1

   Press ⌘⇧3 to start scroll capture

   Open the page, document or chat you want to capture, then press ⌘⇧3 (the default scroll-capture shortcut, which you can change in Settings).

2. 2

   Pick the window or area

   Choose the window or drag a rectangle over the region you want. ShotScreen highlights the scrollable content and shows direction indicators for where it can scroll.

3. 3

   Let it scroll automatically

   ShotScreen scrolls the content for you while a live preview builds up on the side. It detects repeated headers and banners so they are not duplicated in the final image.

4. 4

   Get one stitched PNG

   When it reaches the end, ShotScreen stitches everything into a single tall PNG and shows it in the preview thumbnail, ready to annotate, save, share or drag into another app.

When a page will not auto-scroll

Most pages scroll automatically, but some apps and sites block the synthetic scrolling that capture tools rely on. For those, ShotScreen has a manual mode: you scroll the content yourself with the trackpad or wheel, and ShotScreen tracks the movement and stitches the frames as you go. It is the reliable fallback for stubborn pages where fully automatic capture cannot take over.

Why the built-in tool cannot do this

Apple's Screenshot tool (⌘⇧5) and the older ⌘⇧4 both capture only the pixels currently visible on your display. There is no native option to keep scrolling and combine the result, which is why a dedicated app is needed for full-page captures on Mac.

Get scrolling screenshots on your Mac

ShotScreen is free to use, with 5 popup-free screenshots a day. Scroll capture is included from the start.