I really dislike that the shadows on macOS windows appear in screenshots. It makes the overall image larger, making the content of the window less prominent. In this example, I’ve opened a photo in Preview and made a full-window screenshot:
For any screenshot, the shadow can be disabled by holding the option key while taking the screenshot.
Thankfully, the shadow can be excluded from screenshots for good with a quick trip to Terminal.
Launch Terminal.app and enter this command to tell the system to just capture window content, without the window’s shadow:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
Press Return, then use this command to force your Mac to pick up the change to the prefrence file:
killall SystemUIServer
Your Mac’s menu bar will flash as SystemUIServer restarts, and then you’ll be all set for more sane screenshots:
