Crop a Screenshot on iPhone

  1. 1

    Tap the preview thumbnail immediately after taking a screenshot

    When you take a screenshot on iPhone, a small preview appears in the bottom left corner for a few seconds. Tap it quickly before it disappears.

  2. 2

    Tap the crop icon and drag the handles

    The screenshot opens in the markup editor. Tap the crop icon (overlapping squares) in the top right. Drag the corner and edge handles to select the area you want to keep. Tap Done → Save to Photos.

Crop a Screenshot on Android

Same approach — tap the screenshot preview thumbnail immediately after capture. Tap the Edit or pencil icon. Use the crop handles to select your area. Save. Alternatively, open any screenshot in the Photos or Gallery app → tap Edit → Crop.

Crop a Screenshot on Windows

Snipping Tool (Windows 10/11): Press Windows + Shift + S to open Snipping Tool. Drag to select the exact area you want — this captures only that area as a screenshot, bypassing the need to crop afterwards. Or take a full screenshot (Print Screen), paste into Paint (Ctrl+V), use the Select tool to draw around the area you want, then Image → Crop.

Crop a Screenshot on Mac

During capture: Press Cmd+Shift+4 to switch to selection mode — drag to capture only the area you want. No cropping needed. After capture: open the screenshot in Preview. Click and drag to select the area. Tools → Crop (or Cmd+K). Save.

Fastest method on any platformRather than taking a full screenshot and cropping afterwards, take a cropped screenshot directly: iPhone (Cmd+Shift+4 equivalent doesn’t exist, but the editor is fast), Android (same), Windows (Windows+Shift+S), Mac (Cmd+Shift+4). Learning the keyboard shortcut for your platform saves time on every screenshot.

Frequently Asked Questions

Press Cmd+Shift+4, then press the Space bar. The cursor changes to a camera. Hover over the window you want to capture — it highlights blue. Click to capture just that window with a drop shadow. The screenshot saves to the desktop as a PNG.
Many Android phones (Samsung, Google Pixel, OnePlus) support scroll capture. Take a screenshot normally, then in the screenshot preview toolbar, tap the scroll or extend icon (looks like two overlapping rectangles or down arrows). The screen scrolls and captures more content. Tap again to capture further. The result is a long screenshot of the entire page. Not available on all Android devices.