Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

B S Magnet

macrumors 601
Original poster
I gather from searching around that the answer amounts to “not possible”:

From SL onward, the default file name for screencapture is “Screen shot YYYY-MM-DD at HH:mm:ss.[format]”.
Pre-SL, the default file name was “Picture [x].[format]”, where “x” was a sequential digit.

In Tiger or Leopard, are there ways to get screencapture (whose settings are kept under com.apple.screencapture.plist) to parse SQL-style date specifiers (something like %Y%m%d at %H%s) for the name variable? Or is this not feasible?
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,831
26,946
I gather from searching around that the answer amounts to “not possible”:

From SL onward, the default file name for screencapture is “Screen shot YYYY-MM-DD at HH:mm:ss.[format]”.
Pre-SL, the default file name was “Picture [x].[format]”, where “x” was a sequential digit.

In Tiger or Leopard, are there ways to get screencapture (whose settings are kept under com.apple.screencapture.plist) to parse SQL-style date specifiers (something like %Y%m%d at %H%s) for the name variable? Or is this not feasible?
You could try a workaround.

I have an Automator action that renames files by appending the the date to the beginning of a filename. Set as a service I can call it via a keyboard.shortcut.

Maybe set something similar up to use a folder action? What you could do is attach that to the folder that your screenshots go to. Whenever a new one comes in it gets renamed with the time and date.

Between Automator and Applescript that should be possible to put together.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.