Image for article titled How to Show Your Mouse Pointer in macOS Screenshots

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There are many options to take nice screenshots on your Mac, but there’s a catch: the mouse cursor is absent from all of your screenshots by default, which can be a deal breaker for some purposes. For example, sometimes you might not want to go to the bother of annotating screenshots so you can quickly hover the mouse pointer to tell your dad where to click to fix his computer problems.

Once you’re on this boat, we’ll show you how to take macOS screenshots that include the good ol ‘mouse cursor.

How to insert the mouse pointer in macOS screenshots

You’ll need to make a little tweaking to add the mouse pointer to your Mac screenshots. To do this, you need to find your screenshot options accessible through the Command + Shift + 5 Keyboard shortcuts.

When you’ve done that, click Options Menu on the right side of the floating screenshot options window. This opens another menu in which the last sub-item is labeled Options. Choose here Show mouse pointer.

Image for article titled How to Show Your Mouse Pointer in macOS Screenshots

Screenshot: Pranay Parab

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And that’s it. From this moment on, all of your Mac screenshots will include the mouse pointer as well. Go ahead and try it out using the keyboard shortcuts to take a screenshot. To capture the entire screen (including the friendly mouse pointer), press Command + Shift + 3. And to capture part of the screen, try Command + Shift + 4followed by the click-and-drag gesture.

While it’s natural to be excited when you finally see the mouse pointer in your Mac screenshots, you don’t want to end up with a ton of random screenshots on your desktop. So when you are done taking screenshots, this is the best thing to do to see if those images land in yours dedicated screenshots folder.

Finally, if you want to hide the mouse cursor for screenshots, you can go back and invert it by pressing Command + Shift + 5 select again Options, and under the Options Subheading, deactivate Show mouse pointer.