Use Default Screenshot Shortcuts With CleanShot X

Watch the screencast that accompanies this TIL to see how to do this visually.

On macOS there are a set of keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots. The one that I use most often is Cmd-Shift-4. It turns the cursor into cross hairs so that I can make a drag selection of part of the screen to be captured as a screenshot.

I've recently transitioned to using CleanShot X for taking screenshots. It offers some improvements over the built-in screenshot tool, like annotations and sticking recently screenshots in the corner of the window. As part of this transition, I wanted Cmd-Shift-4 to activate CleanShot X's Capture Area feature instead of the built-in one.

To do this, first open up System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Then go to the Screenshots section and de-select any shortcuts that you want to remap. For Cmd-Shift-4, that is "Save picture of selected area as a file".

Then I open Preferences > Shortcuts for CleanShot X and map Capture Area to Cmd-Shift-4.

Hitting Cmd-Shift-4 will now activate CleanShot X's Capture Area instead of the one for the built-in screenshot app.