Screen capture

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This article lists and describes screenshot and screencast software.

Screenshot software

Dedicated software

CoreShot — Simple lightweight screen capture utility for X11. Part of C-Suite.

https://cubocore.org/ || coreshot^AUR

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. However, it is now deprecated and has been merged into Deepin Screen Recorder. There is also a known issue with the clipboard functionality. There is a patched version in the aur deepin-screenshot-copy-patch^AUR

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

Escrotum — Screen capture using python and gtk3, inspired by scrot.

https://github.com/Roger/escrotum || escrotum-git^AUR

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 || gscreenshot^AUR

HotShots — Application for capturing screens and saving them in a variety of image formats as well as adding annotations and graphical data (arrows, lines, texts, ...).

https://github.com/obiwankennedy/HotShots || hotshots-git^AUR

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

https://github.com/jomo/imgur-screenshot || imgur-screenshot-git^AUR

ksnip — Ksnip is a Qt based cross-platform screenshot tool that provides many annotation features for your screenshots.

https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip || ksnip

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.

https://lightscreen.com.ar || lightscreen^AUR

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.

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

menyoki — Screen{shot,cast} and perform ImageOps on the command line.

https://github.com/orhun/menyoki || menyoki

mss — An xrandr-aware screenshots Python module with a minimal CLI.

https://pypi.org/project/mss/ || python-mss

Pantheon Screenshot — Screenshot tool designed for elementary OS.

https://github.com/elementary/screenshot || pantheon-screenshot

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.

https://screencloud.net/ || screencloud^AUR

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

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

Scrot — Simple command-line screenshot utility for X.

https://github.com/resurrecting-open-source-projects/scrot || scrot

Shotgun — Minimal X screenshot utility written in Rust. According to the author it is twice as fast as maim.

https://github.com/neXromancers/shotgun || shotgun

Shutter — Rich screenshot and editing program. Supports delay.

https://shutter-project.org/ || shutter

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 kde-graphics.

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.

https://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) is provided by xorg-xwd.

To take a screenshot of the root window:

$ xwd -root -out screenshot.xwd

Tip: To obtain a delay before taking a screenshot, use the sleep command. For example: sleep 5; 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 (dwm^AUR, 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-git^AUR 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.

To select a portion of the screen and store it on the clipboard, xclip can be used:

$ maim -s -u | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png -i

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.

GNOME features built-in screen recording with the Ctrl+Shift+Alt+r key combination. A red circle is displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen when the recording is in progress. After the recording is finished, a file named Screencast from %d%u-%c.webm is saved in the Videos directory. In order to use the screencast feature the gst plugins need to be installed.

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

FFmpeg

See FFmpeg#Screen capture.

Screencast software

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

Byzanz — Simple screencast tool that produces GIF animations.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/byzanz || 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 || ffcast^AUR

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

https://github.com/dvershinin/green-recorder || green-recorder^AUR

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

https://launchpad.net/kazam || kazam^AUR

Kooha — Simple screen recorder with a minimal GTK interface.

https://github.com/SeaDve/Kooha || kooha^AUR

menyoki — Screen{shot,cast} and perform ImageOps on the command line.

https://github.com/orhun/menyoki || menyoki

Open Broadcaster Software — Video recording and live streaming application.

https://obsproject.com/ || obs-studio

obs-gnome-screencast^AUR – plugin for GNOME screencast feature, supports Wayland
obs-studio-browser^AUR – OBS built with the browser plugin

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

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

RecApp — User friendly screencaster written in GTK. Using free GStreamer modules and not depend on FFmpeg.

https://github.com/amikha1lov/RecApp || recapp-git^AUR

RecordItNow — Plugin based desktop recorder for KDE 4.

http://recorditnow.sourceforge.net/ || recorditnow^AUR

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^AUR, Qt: qt-recordmydesktop^AUR

screencast — Command line interface to record an X11 desktop using FFmpeg, having support for offline recording and live streaming.

https://github.com/dbermond/screencast/ || screencast^AUR

Screencast — Simple screencast recorder designed for elementary OS.

https://github.com/artemanufrij/screencast || pantheon-screencast^AUR

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

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

VokoScreen — Simple screencast GUI tool using GStreamer.

https://linuxecke.volkoh.de/vokoscreen/vokoscreen.html || vokoscreen

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/ || xvidcap^AUR

Wayland

Capturing the screen on Wlroots-based compositor can be done using grim or grimshot (provided by sway) for screenshots and wf-recorder (or wf-recorder-git^AUR) for video; wlrobs-hg^AUR is an obs-studio plugin that allows you to screen capture on wlroots-based compositors. Optionally, slurp can be used to select the part of the screen to capture.

Take a screenshot of the whole screen:

$ grim screenshot.png

Take a screenshot of current window:

$ grim -g "$(swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -r '.. | select(.focused?) | .rect | "\(.x),\(.y) \(.width)x\(.height)"')" screenshot.png

Take a screenshot of a part of the screen:

$ grim -g "$(slurp)" screenshot.png

Take a screenshot of a part of the screen and put the output into the clipboard using wl-clipboard:

$ grim -g "$(slurp)" - | wl-copy

Capture a video of the whole screen:

$ wf-recorder -f recording.mp4

Capture a video of a part of the screen:

$ wf-recorder -g "$(slurp)"

Tip:

slurpshot is an interactive screenshot taking script using bemenu.
To use a post-capture screenshot editing and drawing tool such as swappy: grim -g "$(slurp)" - | swappy -f -

Additionally, some programs mentioned above work under Wayland (e.g. ksnip, green-recorder^AUR).

Screencasting

Via GNOME screencast

green-recorder^AUR, obs-gnome-screencast^AUR and obs-studio support screen recording on Wayland using GNOME screencast feature.

Via a virtual webcam video feed

Tip:

This method has been tested with zoom^AUR (desktop client running under xorg-xwayland) and BigBlueButton under chromium (under firefox the resolution is really low); skypeforlinux-stable-bin^AUR detects the virtual video device VirtualVideoDevice, but outputs a blank screen.
The example uses wf-recorder but you can use whatever software, just feed the output to the virtual device.

Install wf-recorder (or wf-recorder-git^AUR) and v4l2loopback-dkms. Load the v4l2loopback kernel module with the following parameters:

# modprobe v4l2loopback exclusive_caps=1 card_label=VirtualVideoDevice

Verify that a new virtual video device VirtualVideoDevice has been created:

$ v4l2-ctl --list-devices

...
VirtualVideoDevice (platform:v4l2loopback-000):
	/dev/video2
...

Start recording the screen with wf-recorder and feed the output to the new virtual video device VirtualVideoDevice created by v4l2loopback:

$ wf-recorder --muxer=v4l2 --codec=rawvideo --file=/dev/video2 -x yuv420p

The yuv420p colour space is required for the video output to be compatible with Zoom [2].

You can now select the above virtual video device as your "webcam" in video calling/video conferencing applications (the device is called VirtualVideoDevice). You can use ffplay (part of ffmpeg), mpv, or gst-launch (part of gstreamer) to verify that the virtual video device indeed outputs your screenshare:

$ ffplay /dev/video2

$ mpv av://v4l2:/dev/video2

$ gst-launch-1.0 -v v4l2src device=/dev/video2 ! glimagesink

If Firefox is unable to read the video stream and prints a message like "AbortError: Starting video failed", try preloading v4l2compat.so:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/v4l1compat.so firefox

Sharing individual applications

Warning: This method does not involve a proper implementation of individual application sharing as the region being shared will not change after resizing any windows.

As explained above, wf-recorder is able to record only a portion of the screen by first selecting a region with slurp. To use this functionality for sharing a specific region/application window through a virtual video device, start recording the screen with the following modified command:

$ wf-recorder -g "$(slurp)" --muxer=v4l2 --codec=rawvideo --file=/dev/video2 -x yuv420p

After selecting a region of the screen, you will be able to access the video feed through the vitual video device /dev/video2 as above.

Via the WebRTC protocol

Note: This method only allows sharing an entire output and not individual applications [3].

See PipeWire#WebRTC screen sharing.

Chromium and Firefox should now be able to access the screenshare. You can verify this through Mozilla's getUserMedia / getDisplayMedia Test Page.

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 ansi2html^AUR package, from the AUR. (Not to be confused with ansi2html from python-ansi2html).

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.