Mac Daddy Monday: Take a Screen Shot with the Mouse Cursor Included

As we have been doing these blog posts we take a lot of screen shots. The easiest way to do this is with the keyboard shortcut SHIFT-COMMAND-3 to get the entire screen, and SHIFT-COMMAND-4 to get a crosshair cursor to select the screen shot area. This will put the new image file right on the desktop.

The problem with this method however, is that the mouse cursor is not included. In many applications the mouse cursor is contextual, and changes based on where you point it. In these blog posts we like to point that out in the screen shots, so here is what we do:

Instead of this screen shot method, use the application Grab, which is in Applications - Utilities.

Open Grab’s preferences, and you can choose which mouse cursor to use.

This however, doesn’t show the natural cursor, so in situations where the cursor changes within the application, this method won’t work. There are many 3rd party screen capture applications that will capture the actual mouse cursor.

Try Jing (free): http://www.techsmith.com/Jing/
Little Snapper (free trail download, then you must purchase): http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/
Screen Flow (also not free): http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/
or Snapz Pro (also not free): http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
Screen Flow and Snapz Pro are more expensive, but they are full feature screen casting studio apps geared toward video bloggers and podcast makers.

Find any more? Post them up in the comments below.

-by LC Tech Blog contributor Chris Fitzgerald