How to Crop a Screenshot on Windows, Mac and Online
The quickest way to crop a screenshot is often to avoid cropping at all: capture only the area you need. On Windows, press Windows logo key + Shift + S and drag a box. On a Mac, press Command-Shift-5 and choose to capture a portion of the screen. If you already have a full-screen screenshot, Windows' Snipping Tool and the Mac's Preview app can both crop it in a few clicks.
An online cropper such as Image Crop is the easier route when you're on a computer that isn't yours, when you need an exact shape such as square or 16:9, or when you want the result in a different format. Here's each method, built-in options first.
Crop a screenshot on Windows
Capture just the part you want
- Press Windows logo key + Shift + S. The screen dims and the Snipping Tool overlay appears.
- Choose the kind of snip you want, such as a rectangle, and drag over the area to keep.
- The snip is copied, and you can open it in Snipping Tool to save it.
Crop a screenshot you've already taken
- Open the image in Snipping Tool.
- Select the Image crop button.
- Drag the handles at the edges or corners to the area you want, confirm, and save.
Microsoft's support page for Snipping Tool covers these steps, including the crop button. For most people on Windows 10 or 11, this is all you need.
Crop a screenshot on a Mac
Capture a portion of the screen
- Press Command-Shift-5 to open the screenshot controls.
- Choose to capture the entire screen, a selected window, or a selected portion.
- After you capture, a thumbnail appears in the corner of the screen. Click it to edit or share, swipe it away to save straight away, or drag it into a document or folder.
Crop an existing screenshot in Preview
- Open the screenshot in Preview.
- If the Markup toolbar isn't showing, click Show Markup Toolbar.
- Click the Rectangular Selection button and drag over the part you want to keep.
- Click the Crop button in the Markup toolbar.
If you crop too much, choose Edit > Undo Crop straight away. Preview can also show the exact size of your selection: choose Tools > Show Inspector and open the Crop Inspector.
When an online cropper is easier
The built-in tools are fine for a quick trim. A browser-based cropper is handier in a few situations:
- You need a specific shape. A square image for a shop listing, a 16:9 image for a slide or video thumbnail. Freehand cropping by eye rarely lands on an exact ratio.
- You're on a work, library or school computer where you can't install anything, or a Chromebook or tablet without the apps above.
- You received the screenshot from someone else, as a PNG in an email or chat, and just want to trim it and send it on.
- You want a different format. Screenshots are usually PNG, and you might want a smaller JPEG or WebP for a form or a website.
Image Crop runs in your browser. The picture is read and cropped by your own device, not sent to our server, and nothing is stored after you close the page. That's worth knowing when the screenshot shows an email inbox, a bank page or a chat.
Crop a screenshot online, step by step
- Open Image Crop and click the upload area to choose your screenshot. PNG, JPG, WebP and GIF all work.
- In the Ratio bar, pick Free to draw any rectangle, or a fixed shape: 1:1, 4:3, 16:9, 3:2 or 2:3.
- Drag the crop box to move it, and drag its edges or corners to resize it. With a ratio selected, the box keeps that shape as you resize.
- To zoom in on a small area, scroll with the mouse wheel over the picture, or pinch on a touch screen. You can also drag the picture underneath the box.
- Pick an output in the Format menu: PNG, JPEG or WebP.
- Click Download Cropped Image. The file keeps your original name plus
-cropped, for example invoice-cropped.png.
Click Reset to start again with a different picture.
Which format to save a screenshot in
For screenshots, PNG is usually the right choice. It keeps every pixel exactly, so small text and thin lines stay sharp. Files can be larger, but screenshots with mostly flat colour often stay reasonably small.
Choose JPEG only if the screenshot is mainly a photo (for example, a capture of a video frame) or a form insists on JPG. JPEG tends to add faint smudges around text. WebP gives smaller files and is fine if the place you're uploading accepts it.
If the cropped file is still too large for an upload limit, run it through Image Compress and lower its width.
Tips for clean screenshot crops
- Leave a little margin. Cropping tight against a button or line of text can make it look cut off. A few pixels of breathing room reads better.
- Remove private details by cropping, not by covering. If a notification, name or email address sits at the edge, crop it out entirely. On a Mac, Preview's Markup tools let you draw shapes, but cropping is the simplest way to be sure the detail is gone.
- Crop before you shrink. Cropping first means you keep the full detail in the part you care about.
- Don't crop a tiny area and expect it to look sharp. Cropping only removes pixels. A small section of a screenshot will be a small image, and it may look soft if a website stretches it.
Limits of the online tool
Image Crop has no box for typing exact pixel sizes, no rotate or flip button, and it handles one image at a time. An animated GIF is saved as a single still frame. If you need a round version of a screenshot, say for an avatar, use Circle Image Crop instead.
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