Automated Screenshots in Mac

Taking screenshots every x seconds. 

• Launch Terminal. It can be found in the applications folder.

• Now, write one of the following code in terminal. First one will name files by time and second by number. 

while [ 1 ];do vardate=$(date +%d\-%m\-%Y\_%H.%M.%S); screencapture -t jpg ~/Desktop/$vardate.jpg; sleep 8; done

i=1;while [ 1 ];do screencapture -t jpg ~/Desktop/$i.jpg; let i++;sleep 8; done

• Once you hit "enter", mac will start capturing screenshots every 8 seconds. 

• Now, you can minimize terminal window, and start your work!

• To Stop, bring forth the terminal window and press control+c.

Terminal after pressing control+c. 

Customizing:

Changing File Format. replace '-t jpg' with '-t pdf' or '-t tiff' or '-t png'. Also change $ \textrm{'\$vardate.jpg' to '\$vardate.pdf'} $  or appropriate format.

Changing Time. To take picture every 3 seconds replace 'sleep 8' with 'sleep 3'. (2 seconds or longer to avoid problems with naming).

Changing Save Location. Replace $\textrm{'~/Desktop/\$vardate.jpg' with '~/Pictures/ScreenShots/\$vardate.jpg'}$

Important Notes:

Dropbox's screenshot recording option could inturrept the this method. So it is advised that you quit Dropbox or other screen capturing services while using this. 

It is not convenient to take a selected window screenshot using this method. So, I recommend that you take full screen captures, and later use a tool like Photoshop to batch crop all the images. I will be writing a guide for that in future and update this blog with it's link.