A Recommendation for Screen Logging

Introduction

I record a screen log every hour on my Mac. It’s handy for looking back later, like remembering what I was doing at a certain time. And honestly, it’s just fun to look through.

They’re saved as images like this.

How to record it

I use cron, a standard feature of macOS, to run a script and record a screen log every hour.

You configure cron with a command called crontab. See this page for the configuration. https://spreadsheep.net/%E3%80%90crontab%E3%80%91mac-book%E3%81%A7%E5%87%A6%E7%90%86%E3%82%92%E5%AE%9A%E6%9C%9F%E5%AE%9F%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E6%96%B9%E6%B3%95%E3%80%90%E8%B6%85%E7%B0%A1%E5%8D%98%E3%80%91/

FOLDERDIR=`date +%Y年%m月%d日`
DSTDIR=/Users/<username>/ScreenLogs/$FOLDERDIR

if [ ! -d $DSTDIR ]; then
  # if it doesn't exist, create it (and continue to the main process)
  mkdir $DSTDIR
fi

/usr/sbin/screencapture -m -C -T0 -x $DSTDIR/capture_`date +%Y年%m月%d日%H時%M分`.png

00 * * * * /Users/<username>/apps/auto_capture.sh

By saving this script to /Users/<username>/apps/auto_capture.sh and configuring it in crontab, you can record a screen log every hour. Of course, you can freely set the timing and frequency of the recording.

If the saved images end up being the desktop, try this.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59239485/screencapture-over-cron-shown-background-instead-window-content

Summary

By recording a screen log, you can look back on things later. Give it a try.