macOS Sierra 10.12.6 not saving Screenshots

I bought a new macbook pro and everything was running smoothly but some days ago I noticed that the screenshots (command+shift+3) are not saving to the Desktop (it was working before), only saving to the clipboard.

  • It is not a wrong shortcut since I can hear the screenshot sound.

  • I have already tried to Force Quit Finder or restart the Mac and none of these worked.

  • I have already tried this terminal command defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/ and killall SystemUIServer but they didnt work as well.

  • I do not have DropBox Installed

I am a developer so I install new dependencies every day, it may have changed some default configurations?


I figured it out. I have the latest mac, that comes with the Touch Bar. So I noticed that when a press command+shift+4 (without the control, so it should save directly to the desktop) my Touch Bar shows this:

Touchbar Screenshot

So, as you can see, it was saving to the Clipboard, instead of the Desktop (I probably did this by touching the Touch Bar unintentionally). Then, if you did everything that I wrote at my question and nothing happened, probably this is your problem too.

How to solve this:

  • Press command+shift+4, so your Touch Bar will look like the image above.
  • So, all you got to do is change the option that is selected at the Save to: section to Desktop.

Doing this, both command+shift+3 and command+shift+4 will now save your Screen Shots to the Desktop.


Instead of using this terminal command :

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/

Try a different approach using this terminal command

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/yourusername/Desktop/

Obviously replace “yourusername” with your username