Screen capture - ArchWiki

# Screen capture

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This article lists and describes screenshot and screencast software.

## Screenshot software

### Dedicated software

- Deepin Screenshot — Quite easy-to-use screenshot tool. Features: global hotkey to trigger screenshot tool, take screenshot of a selected area, easy to add text and line drawings onto the screenshot. Python/Qt5 based.

  https://www.deepin.org/en/original/deepin-screenshot/ || deepin-screenshot

- Escrotum — Screen capture using pygtk, inspired by scrot.

  https://github.com/Roger/escrotum || escrotum-gitAUR

- Flameshot — Qt5 based software for interactive screenshot taking. Select the desired area, draw with different tools and enjoy the customization capabilities.

  https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot || flameshot

- GNOME Screenshot — Screenshot tool for the GNOME desktop.

  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-screenshot/ || gnome-screenshot

- grim — Grab images from a Wayland compositor.

  https://github.com/emersion/grim || grim

- gscreenshot — Simple GTK screenshot utility with delays, selection, and copy-to-clipboard functionality.

  https://github.com/thenaterhood/gscreenshot || gscreenshotAUR

- imgur-screenshot — Take screenshot selection, upload to imgur. + more cool things

  https://github.com/jomo/imgur-screenshot || imgur-screenshot-gitAUR

- Lightscreen — Simple tool to automate the tedious process of saving and cataloging screenshots, it operates as a hidden background process that is invoked with one (or multiple) hotkeys and then saves a screenshot file to disk according to the user's preferences.

  http://lightscreen.com.ar || lightscreenAUR

- LXQt Screenshot — Screenshot tool for LXQt. Run with `lximage-qt --screenshot`.

  https://github.com/lxde/lximage-qt || lximage-qt

- maim — Simple command line utility that takes screenshots. It is meant to replace scrot and performs better than scrot in many ways.

  https://github.com/naelstrof/maim || maim

- MATE Screenshot — Screenshot tool for the MATE desktop.

  http://mate-desktop.org || mate-utils

- ScreenCloud — Take a screenshot of the entire screen or to select an area and then uploading the screenshot to imgur+auth. has plugins and system tray.

  http://screencloud.net/ || screencloudAUR

- ScreenGrab — Cross-platform application designed to quickly take screenshots (Qt).

  https://github.com/DOOMer/screengrab || screengrab

- Scrot — Simple command-line screenshot utility for X.

  http://freecode.com/projects/scrot || scrot

- Shutter — Rich screenshot and editing program. Supports delay.

  http://shutter-project.org/ || shutterAUR

- Spectacle — KDE application for taking screenshots. It is capable of capturing images of the whole desktop, a single window, a section of a window, a selected rectangular region or a freehand region. Part of kdegraphics.

  https://github.com/KDE/spectacle/ || spectacle

- Xfce4 Screenshooter — Application and Xfce4 panel plugin to take screenshots about the entire screen, the active window or a selected region. Part of xfce4-goodies.

  http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-screenshooter || xfce4-screenshooter

- xwd — X Window System image dumping utility

  https://www.x.org/ || xorg-xwd

#### xwd

xwd(1) provided by xorg-xwd

Take a screenshot of the root window:

    $ xwd -root -out screenshot.xwd

Note: The methods for taking shots of active windows with `import` can also be used with `xwd`.

#### scrot

scrot enables taking screenshots from the CLI and offers features such as a user-definable time delay. Unless instructed otherwise, it saves the file in the current working directory.

    $ scrot -t 20 -d 5

The above command saves a dated .png file, along with a thumbnail (20% of original), for Web posting. It provides a 5 second delay before capturing in this instance.

You can also use standard date and time formatting when saving to a file. e.g.,

    $ scrot ~/screenshots/%Y-%m-%d-%T-screenshot.png

saves the screenshot in a filename with the current year, month, date, hours, minutes, and seconds to a folder in your home directory called "screenshots"

See scrot(1) for more information. You can simply automate the file to uploaded like so [1].

Note: In some window managers (dwmAUR, xmonad and possibly others) `scrot -s` does not work properly when running via window manager's keyboard shortcut, this can be worked around by prepending scrot invocation with a short pause `sleep 0.2; scrot -s`.

#### escrotum

escrotum-gitAUR screen capture using PyGTK, inspired by scrot

Created because scrot has glitches when selection mode is used with refreshing windows.

Because the command line interface its almost the same as scrot, can be used as a replacement of it.

#### maim

maim is aimed to be an improved scrot.

Takes screenshots of your desktop using slop for regions. It is meant to overcome shortcomings of scrot.

### Desktop environment specific

#### Spectacle

If you use KDE, you might want to use `Spectacle`.

Spectacle is provided by the spectacle package.

#### Xfce Screenshooter

If you use Xfce you can install xfce4-screenshooter and then add a keyboard binding:

Xfce Menu > Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts

If you want to skip the Screenshot prompt, type `$ xfce4-screenshooter -h` in terminal for the options.

#### GNOME

GNOME users can press `PrintScreen` or Apps > Accessories > Take Screenshot. You may need to install gnome-screenshot.

#### Cinnamon

The default installation of Cinnamon does not provide a screenshot utility. Installing gnome-screenshot will enable screenshots through the Menu > Accessories > Screenshot or by pressing `PrintScreen`.

#### Other desktop environments or window managers

For other desktop environments such as LXDE or window managers such as Openbox and Compiz, one can add the above commands to the hotkey to take the screenshot. For example,

    $ import -window root ~/Pictures/$(date '+%Y%m%d-%H%M%S').png

Note that `import` is part of the imagemagick package. Adding the above command to the `PrintScreen` key to Compiz allows to take the screenshot to the Pictures folder according to date and time. Notice that the `rc.xml` file in Openbox does not understand commas; so, in order to bind that command to the `PrintScreen` key in Openbox, you need to add the following to the keyboard section of your `rc.xml` file:

    rc.xml

    <!-- Screenshot -->
        <keybind key="Print">
          <action name="Execute">
            <command>sh -c "import -window root ~/Pictures/$(date '+%Y%m%d-%H%M%S').png"</command>
          </action>
        </keybind>

If the `Print` above does not work, see Extra keyboard keys and use different keysym or keycode.

### Packages including a screenshot utility

#### ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick

See ImageMagick#Screenshot taking.

#### GIMP

You also can take screenshots with GIMP (File > Create > Screenshot...).

#### imlib2

imlib2 provides a binary `imlib2_grab` to take screenshots. To take a screenshot of the full screen, type:

    $ imlib2_grab screenshot.png

Note that scrot actually uses `imlib2`.

#### FFmpeg

See FFmpeg#Screen capture.

## Screencast software

See also FFmpeg#Screen capture and Wikipedia:Comparison of screencasting software.

Screencast utilities allow you to create a video of your desktop or individual windows.

- Byzanz — Simple screencast tool that produces GIF animations.

  https://blogs.gnome.org/otte/2009/08/30/byzanz-0-2-0/ || byzanz

- Deepin Screen Recorder — Screen recorder application for Deepin desktop.

  https://www.deepin.org/en/original/deepin-screen-recorder/ || deepin-screen-recorder

- FFcast — FFmpeg-based screencast tool written in Bash.

  https://github.com/lolilolicon/FFcast || ffcastAUR

- Green Recorder — Simple yet functional desktop recorder for Linux systems.

  https://github.com/green-project/green-recorder || green-recorderAUR

- Kazam — Screencasting program with design in mind. Handles multiscreen setups.

  https://launchpad.net/kazam || kazamAUR

- OBS — Video recording and live streaming application.

  https://obsproject.com/ || obs-studio
  - obs-gnome-screencastAUR – plugin for GNOME screencast feature, supports Wayland.

- Peek — Simple screencast tool that produces GIF, APNG, WebM or MP4 animations.

  https://github.com/phw/peek || peek

- RecordItNow — Plugin based desktop recorder for KDE.

  http://recorditnow.sourceforge.net/ || recorditnowAUR

- RecordMyDesktop — Easy to use utility that records your desktop into the ogg format with a CLI, GTK or Qt interface. (inactive development)

  http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/ || CLI: recordmydesktop, GTK: gtk-recordmydesktop, Qt: qt-recordmydesktopAUR

- SimpleScreenRecorder — Feature-rich screen recorder written in C++/Qt5 that supports X11 and OpenGL.

  http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/ || simplescreenrecorder

- VokoScreen — Simple screencast GUI tool using FFmpeg.

  http://www.kohaupt-online.de/hp || vokoscreenAUR

- XVidCap — Application used for recording a screencast or digital recording of an X Window System screen output with an audio narration.

  http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/ || xvidcapAUR

## Wayland

See Wayland#Screencast recording.

## Terminal

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: Add subsection about terminal recorders. (Discuss in Talk:Screen capture#)

### Capture with ANSI codes

You can use the script(1) command, part of the util-linux package. Just run `script` and from that moment, all the output is going to be saved to the `typescript` file, including the ANSI codes.

Once you are done, just run `exit` and the `typescript` would ready. The resulting file can be converted to HTML using the ansi2htmlAUR package, from the AUR.

To convert the `typescript` file to `typescript.html`, do the following:

    $ ansi2html --bg=dark < typescript > typescript.html

Actually, some commands can be piped directly to ansi2html:

    $ ls --color|ansi2html --bg=dark >output.html

That does not work on every single case, so in those cases, using `script` is mandatory.

### Framebuffer

Install a framebuffer and use fbgrab or fbdump to take a screenshot.

### Virtual console

If you merely want to capture the text in the console and not an actual image, you can use `setterm`, which is part of the util-linux package. The following command will dump the textual contents of virtual console 1 to a file `screen.dump` in the current directory:

    # setterm -dump 1 -file screen.dump

Root permission is needed because the contents of `/dev/vcs1` need to be read.

Categories:

- System administration
- Multimedia

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