How to take a scrolling screenshot on a Mac

Short answer: macOS has no scrolling screenshot; Shift+Cmd+4 stops at the screen. In Chrome or Edge install FullPage Capture (free) and click once; in Safari use File → Export as PDF; for any other window use Shottr (free) or CleanShot X.

Shift+Cmd+4 captures what is on the screen and stops there: macOS has no scrolling screenshot of its own. For a web page you still have four good ways, one per browser, and for anything else on the Mac there are apps that scroll any window. This guide gives the steps for each and says which fits which job.

Updated September 27, 2026By the FullPage Capture team, the people who build the extension

The quick answer

Chrome, Edge, Brave or Arc: install FullPage Capture, click once, and the whole page arrives as one image or PDF. Free.

Safari: File → Export as PDF gives you the whole page as a document; the Web Inspector gives you a PNG.

Any other window (Finder, Slack, Mail): a Mac app with scrolling capture, such as Shottr (free) or CleanShot X (paid).

What the Mac screenshot shortcuts can and cannot do

The three shortcuts are worth knowing precisely, because they are where most searches for “scrolling screenshot Mac” start.

Shift+Cmd+3 captures the whole screen.
Shift+Cmd+4 captures an area you drag, or, after pressing Space, one window with its shadow.
Shift+Cmd+5 opens the Screenshot app: the same captures plus screen recording, a timer and a choice of where to save.

None of them scrolls. What is below the fold is not in the picture, and there is no setting to change that. Everything that follows works around it.

Chrome and Edge on a Mac: the extension

In a Chromium browser the simplest way is an extension that scrolls the page for you and stitches one image. These steps are for FullPage Capture, which we make.

Install FullPage Capture in Chrome or EdgeFrom the Chrome Web Store or Edge Add-ons. Free, no account, no watermark. Brave, Arc, Opera and Vivaldi install the Chrome build.
Open the page and click the iconOr press Alt+Shift+K (the Option key is Alt on a Mac keyboard, so Option+Shift+K). The page scrolls and captures itself: sticky headers once, panels that scroll inside the page unrolled, images that load on scroll waited for.
Copy, annotate or saveThe whole page opens as one image in a result tab. Copy it to the clipboard, open the editor to draw, blur or crop, or save it as PNG, JPEG or a PDF with page breaks between lines. Files are saved at your screen's pixel density, so a Retina display gives a 2x image.

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Add to Chrome

Without an extension, Chrome has a hidden command: open DevTools with Option+Cmd+I, press Shift+Cmd+P, type “screenshot” and choose Capture full size screenshot. Edge has Web Capture (Shift+Cmd+S) with a full page option. Both are fine for a plain article; both stop at panels that scroll inside the page and neither waits for images that load on scroll. The Chrome guide covers the built-in command in detail.

Safari: Export as PDF and the Web Inspector

Safari cannot run Chrome extensions, but it has two built-in routes to the whole page.

Export as PDFIn Safari choose File, then Export as PDF. Safari writes the entire page as one tall PDF page, links included. It is a document, not an image; open it in Preview and export to PNG if you need a picture.
Or the Web InspectorTurn on the Develop menu (Safari Settings, Advanced, Show features for web developers), open the Web Inspector (Option+Cmd+I), select the html element at the top of the Elements tab, right-click it and choose Capture Screenshot. Safari saves a PNG of the whole page.

Both render the page in one piece, so sticky headers do not repeat. Both stop where the page stops: an app that scrolls inside a panel comes out one screen tall, and neither offers an editor, a clipboard copy or paper-size page breaks.

Firefox: Save full page

Firefox has the most direct built-in option of any Mac browser: right-click the page, choose Take Screenshot, then Save full page. Copy or download the PNG. The same limits apply to inner scrollers and lazy-loaded images, and there is no annotation. FullPage Capture does not run in Firefox.

Any window, not just the browser: Mac apps

A browser extension sees web pages only. To scroll-capture a Finder window, a long Slack thread, Mail or a PDF viewer, you need a Mac app that drives the scrolling itself:

Shottr (free, with a paid licence for continued use): scrolling capture of any window, plus OCR and measurements.
CleanShot X (paid): scrolling capture, annotation, cloud sharing, recording.
Snagit (paid): panoramic capture and a full editor, on Windows too.

These stitch screen frames as they scroll, so a fixed header inside the window can repeat and fast-moving content can misalign. For web pages in Chrome or Edge the extension gives a cleaner result, because it works from inside the page and knows where the header is.

Cases that trip people up

	Mac built-in routes (shortcuts, Safari export)	FullPage Capture in Chrome or Edge
A plain article, whole page	Safari export or Chrome DevTools	Yes
Gmail, Notion, a dashboard (scrolls inside a panel)	No	Yes
Sticky header once	Safari yes; stitched apps often not	Yes
Images that load on scroll	Often missing	Waited for
One image on the clipboard	Shortcuts only, one screen	Yes
Annotate, blur, crop	Preview or Markup afterwards	Built inSaving an edited capture is Pro
PDF with page breaks between lines	NoSafari gives one long page	Yes
Windows other than the browser	Third-party app	No

Retina size. Captures are 2x on a Retina display. That is the sharp original; downscale in Preview if you need a smaller file.
Very long pages. Chrome's canvas limit is 28,800 pixels per side; the extension saves numbered parts beyond it. Safari's PDF has no such limit.
Dark mode. A dark page is captured on its own dark background, not on white.
Infinite scroll. Scroll until you have what you need, then capture; the capture takes what is loaded.
Pages behind a login. Every method here runs in your own browser, so they all work; online “URL to screenshot” services do not.

Questions

Can a Mac take a scrolling screenshot without any software?

Not of an arbitrary window. The screenshot shortcuts (Shift+Cmd+3, 4 and 5) capture the screen or a window as it is. For a web page, Safari can export the whole page as a PDF, and Chrome, Edge and Firefox have their own full page commands, described above. For other apps you need a third-party tool.

What is the shortcut for a full page screenshot in Safari?

There is none; use File, Export as PDF, or the Web Inspector's Capture Screenshot on the html element. Both are described above.

How do I take a scrolling screenshot in Chrome on a Mac?

With the extension: click the icon or press Option+Shift+K. Without it: open DevTools (Option+Cmd+I), press Shift+Cmd+P, type "screenshot" and choose Capture full size screenshot. The built-in command cannot unroll panels that scroll inside the page and often misses images that load on scroll. Full page screenshot in Chrome, step by step

Why is my screenshot blurry or twice as large as expected?

Retina displays have two device pixels per CSS pixel, so a full page capture of a 1,440-pixel-wide page is 2,880 pixels wide. That is not a fault; it is the sharp version. Downscale it in Preview if the file is too large, or export JPEG instead of PNG.

Why does the header repeat down the whole screenshot?

A header that stays fixed while you scroll is photographed on every screen by tools that stitch screens together. The extension captures it once and hides it for the rest; Safari's Export as PDF renders the page in one piece and does not have the problem either.

Can I capture Gmail, Notion or a dashboard on a Mac?

Yes, in Chrome or Edge with the extension, which finds the panel that really scrolls and unrolls it. Safari's Export as PDF and Chrome's built-in command give you one screen of such apps, because the page itself does not scroll.

How do I annotate the screenshot afterwards?

Preview and Markup handle arrows and text on any image. The extension has an editor of its own with arrows, shapes, text, highlight, numbered badges, blur, pixelate and crop, and every capture stays in its Files list so you can come back to it. Saving an edited capture from the extension is part of Pro.

Does this work on an iPhone or iPad?

Differently: on iOS, take a screenshot in Safari and choose Full Page in the preview; it saves as a PDF. Browser extensions do not run on iOS.

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