How to change screenshot saving format from PNG to JPG on Mac

If you also take screenshots on a daily basis and don't keep them to yourself, then today's tutorial might be useful for you. It's been a few days since you wondered why screenshots in macOS are saved in PNG format by default. Since the PNG format is an uncompressed format, its size is many times higher than, for example, in the case of the compressed JPG format. So if you wanted to send a screenshot to someone, you had to wait a long time for it to upload, or you had to reduce it before sending it. However, you can simply avoid this procedure and let the macOS operating system automatically save the screenshots in JPG format. If you are interested in how to do it, be sure to read this article to the very end.

Change the format of screenshots from PNG to JPG

As is usual, in the case of more advanced interventions into the system we have to use Terminal, and this also applies in this case. Terminal you can open either with Spotlight, which you activate either with a keyboard shortcut Command + Spacebar, or using magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen. However, the terminal is also classically located in Applications, specifically in a subfolder named jine. Once started and loaded Terminal copy this one command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg;killall SystemUIServer

Then put it in the window Terminal. After inserting, just press Enter, which will confirm the command. After confirmation the windows will flash, but after a few seconds everything will go back to normal. If you try to take a screenshot now, you may notice that it was created in the format JPG and not in PNG format.

Gallery

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If you want to go back to the PNG format, for example because you care about the quality of the resulting image, then of course you can. Just use the procedure that is given above. However, use this instead of the original command command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png;killall SystemUIServer

Then confirm it again Enter and wait for the Mac to "recover" again. Any screenshots you take now will be saved in the format again PNG.

Gallery #2

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This is how you can easily get all screenshots saved in JPG format on your Mac. As I mentioned before, this change can be useful mainly because JPG images take up less space. You can send them to someone faster, or upload them anywhere on the web.

Discussion of the article

[Petersman]

But come on… Fix it… .PNG is not uncompressed! PNG is Lossless compression compared to JPG lossy compression. Yes, PNG is therefore slightly larger, but it is compressed. For example, .BMP is uncompressed