Capture a single window without the big drop shadow — via Apple Support

Tricklow riskmacOS 14 Sonoma and later

Window screenshots include a wide transparent shadow, which looks odd in documents and makes the image bigger. Hold Option when you click to drop it for one shot, or turn shadows off for good.

Relaunch the app it changes (Finder, Dock…) to see it

The easy way

  1. Press Shift + Command + 4, then Space. The pointer becomes a camera.
  2. Hold Option while you click the window to leave out the shadow.
  3. To turn shadows off for every window capture, run the command.

Command

Run in Terminal (Applications › Utilities).

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true; killall SystemUIServer

Undo

defaults delete com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow; killall SystemUIServer

Sources

Source reviewed
2026-11-02
Link checked
2026-11-02
Tested hands-on
Not by Oddbyte.Me

Oddbyte.Me hasn't tried this on every macOS version, so keep the undo handy.

screenshotwindowshadowoption key

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