How to add a background to a screenshot on your Mac

You've seen it in every launch post: a screenshot floating on a soft gradient, with space round it, rounded corners and a shadow. macOS doesn't do this by itself. The Screenshot app saves the raw capture, and Preview has no background tool.

The free way is a Keynote slide. The quick ways are apps made for it: CleanShot X, Xnapper and Shottr, and Koi's Shift wheel, which has an Add BG tool. We make Koi, so read that part knowing it. Prices and Apple's steps were checked October 21, 2026.

The background only looks good if the capture is tidy. From Apple's screenshot guide:

1. For part of the screen, press Shift-Command-4 and drag across what you want.
2. For one window, press Shift-Command-4, then the Space bar, and click the window.
3. For more options, like a timer or where to save, press Shift-Command-5.

Screenshots land on your desktop by default. Close the tabs and notifications you don't want in the shot before you take it; it's quicker than covering them later.

1. Open Keynote with a blank theme. In the Document sidebar, set Slide Size to Custom Slide Size if you want a square or 16:9 picture.
2. Click Format. In the Background controls, click Standard and choose Gradient Fill from the pop-up menu, or Advanced Gradient Fill for more colours.
3. Drag your screenshot onto the slide and make it smaller than the slide, so the gradient shows round it.
4. With the screenshot selected, open the Style tab in the Format sidebar and turn on a shadow.
5. Choose File, Export To, Images, and save the slide as a PNG.

The gradient steps are in Apple's Keynote guide. It works and it's free. It's also five minutes for every screenshot, which is why the apps below exist.

1. Start dragging the screenshot, straight from the desktop where it landed.
2. While you're still holding it, press and hold Shift. A wheel opens round your pointer.
3. Drop it on Add BG. The screenshot opens on a new canvas, the settings on the left.
4. Under Background, pick a Gradient, a soft Mesh, a plain Color, or a Picture of your own, blurred as much as you like.
5. Under Frame, set Padding for the space round it, Corners to round the screenshot, and Shadow.
6. Under Canvas, round the canvas's own corners and pick a Ratio: Auto, 1:1, 16:9 or 4:5.
7. Click Save with background. “Screenshot background.png” lands beside the original.

• Thirty gradients to pick from: Koi's own skies and well-loved sets like WebGradients and uiGradients.
• 16:9 suits a wide post or a slide. 4:5 suits a taller post, like one for Instagram. 1:1 is a safe square.
• Rounded canvas corners save a PNG, so the corners stay see-through. With them at 0, the copy keeps the screenshot's own format.
• Reset puts every setting back. Your screenshot is never touched.
• It runs on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, which is nice when the screenshot shows unreleased work.

A gradient isn't the only look. In Koi's Add BG, choose Picture under Background, click Choose a picture…, and pick a photo or a wallpaper. Raise Blur until it turns soft, so the screenshot stays the thing people read. It suits a product shot over your own brand colours, or an app on the photo it was used to edit.

These three are well known for it. From their own sites:

• CleanShot X: $35 once, with a year of updates, then $19 a year to keep updating. Its background tool sets padding, alignment and aspect ratio, with 20 backgrounds included and your own. It's also a full screenshot and screen recording app.
• Xnapper: free with a watermark, or $29.99 once for one Mac. It picks a background colour for you and takes a custom gradient or image, and it can hide emails and API keys in one click.
• Shottr: free to use for as long as you want, with a name-your-price license. It adds gradient backgrounds, shadows and rounded corners.

If you take a lot of screenshots and want capture, backgrounds and recording in one app, a dedicated screenshot app is the better pick. Koi's Add BG works on a picture you already have, from anywhere, alongside the rest of the wheel.

“Not stated” means the app's own page didn't say.

• Too much padding makes the screenshot tiny in a feed. Keep it modest on a 16:9 canvas.
• Busy gradients fight with busy screenshots. A calm gradient, or a blurred picture, keeps the eye on the screen.
• A window screenshot from Shift-Command-4 and Space already has the Mac's own shadow, and a second one can look heavy. Apple says to hold Option while you click the window to leave it out.
• Personal details in the shot. Cover names, emails and tabs before you dress it up.
• Big PNGs. A full-screen Retina screenshot on a canvas can be several megabytes. Compress it before you upload it.

For covering things, see how to blur faces and text. For arrows and numbered steps first, see how to annotate a screenshot. For the file size, how to compress an image.

• Once in a while, and free: a Keynote slide.
• You take screenshots all day and want one app for capture and backgrounds: CleanShot X, Xnapper or Shottr.
• You want backgrounds on any picture, plus crop, redact, annotate and compress on the same gesture: Koi's Shift wheel.

Add BG is part of Koi, on every plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $192 a year, after a 3-day free trial that needs a card. Lifetime is paid once, from $59. See the plans, or how to use the Shift wheel.