How to Take a Screenshot of Only the Dock on a Mac

This practical guide walks through how to take a screenshot of only the dock on a Mac, explains the main requirements, and highlights common issues that may appear along the way.

Follow the steps below.

Use keyboard shortcuts

Whenever you want to take a screenshot of just the Dock area instead of the entire screen as usual, press Shift + Command + 4 , then press Space. This will put the Mac's built-in screenshot tool into window and menu capture mode.

After you press the Space key, the mouse pointer on the screen will immediately turn into a camera icon. Now place the cursor on the Dock area. When you see the Dock section highlighted (bold), click.

When you click, you'll hear the familiar screenshot sound effect. A clear image of the Dock in PNG format will be saved to the location you set (Desktop by default).

Alternatively, you can also launch the Screenshot application (or press Shift + Command + 5 ), and then click the ' Capture Selected Window ' item (it looks like a small window icon.) in the screenshot toolbar. Mac's built-in model.

After you click ' Capture Selected Window ', hover your mouse pointer over the area to become the Dock and click the main mouse button to take a screenshot of this selected area.

Check out the screenshot

As you screenshot for a closer look, you may notice that the PNG file includes a translucent alpha area around and in the Dock itself, depending on the operating system you're using.

In macOS 10.15 Catalina or earlier, the Dock background itself will be opaque white. However, in macOS 11.0 and later, the Dock will dim when viewed in the photo editing app.

You now have your Dock screenshot file. You can edit or share this image file in any way you want.