A screenshot taken in-game, using F1 to hide the heads-up display.
Screenshots are images taken in-game by pressing the F2 key (Fn+F2for Macs and some laptops). They are automatically saved in the screenshots folder of the .minecraft on Windows and Linux and the Minecraft folder on Mac OS X
Screenshots are saved as JPG files with the following naming format, which is based on the current date and time: YYYY-MM-DD_HH.MM.SS.jpg. For example, 2011-02-12_12.25.05.jpg translates to February 12, 2011, 12:25:05.
The screenshot saves exactly what the screen looks like in-game—allowing the player to use control keys to hide or display information. If you press F1 then F2, the player's heads-up display (hot bar, health bar, hunger bar, and so on) will be hidden in the screenshot. Similarly, if you press the F3 first, the data on the debug screen will display and then be captured to the screenshot. (This can be useful when you need to quickly note the coordinates of a location.)
The screenshots folder location varies by operating system. (Hint: "~" means "your home directory" in *nix-based systems like Mac OS X and Linux.)
- Windows XP / Vista / 7:
%appdata%\.minecraft\screenshots - Mac OS X:
~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/screenshots - Linux:
~/.minecraft/screenshots