GNOME Screenshot

GNOME Screenshot is an open source screenshot utility specifically designed for the GNOME desktop environment. It can be used to take screenshots of certain applications, as well as the entire desktop (root window).

Designed for GNOME

The tool was previously distributed as part of the deprecated GNOME Utilities package and could not be installed separately. It also comprised the Baobab (Disk Usage Analyzer), GNOME Dictionary, GNOME Search Tool, and GNOME System Log applications.

However, since version 3.3.1, it was finally split from gnome-utils into its own package, allowing users to install it as a standalone application on other open source desktop environments, such as MATE, Cinnamon, Xfce, Openbox, Fluxbox or LXDE.

Features at a glance

The tool features several command-line options/arguments, which allows any user to create keyboard-based shortcuts for taking screenshots of windows, area or entire root window (desktop).

Its graphical user interface is very simple and easy-to-use, despite the fact that it’s very small and can’t be resized. Its main options include the ability to grab the whole screen, which means that you can take a screenshot of your entire desktop with this option.

In addition, it includes the ability to grab the current window, which means that users will be able take a screenshot of a single window or dialog of a certain application or program. Lastly, you can take a custom screenshot by choosing the “select area to grab” option.

Among other interesting features of the GNOME Screenshot utility, we can mention the ability to delay the screen capture process (in seconds), which is very useful if you want to take a screenshot of an application that closes when you try to capture it, as well as to include the mouse pointer.

You can also choose to include or exclude the window border from a screenshot of a current window. If the window border is included, the application can apply a border or drop shadow effect on it.

Bottom line

Overall, GNOME Screenshot is a powerful and very useful screenshot utility for the amazing GNOME desktop environment. It has its some ups and downs, such as the unresolved issues with various graphical cards, but one cannot live without it.

What is new in this release:

• #787214 - App menu placed below header bar when Application Menu on the top panel of GNOME Shell is disabled [Cosimo Cecchi]
• #765941 - Add backbutton after screenshot [Daniel Byrne]
• #783442 - Cannot build gnome-screenshot with meson on FreeBSD because of -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE [Ting-Wei Lan]
• Translation updates:
• Friulan, Indonesian, German, Esperanto, Kazakh, Spanish, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Swedish, Polish, Galician, Turkish, Serbian, Finnish, Nepali, French, Lithuanian, Danish, Chinese (Taiwan), Latvian, Italian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Basque, Dutch, Greek, Catalan, Icelandic, Persian, Catalan (Valencian), Chinese

What is new in version 3.25.0:

• Port to the Meson build system
• Drop intltool
• Translation updates
• Use Unicode in translatable strings (#774204)
• Show the correct application name (#772006)
• Improve translator comments (#782818)

What is new in version 3.22.0:

• Avoid resizing preview too much (#768087)
• Translation updates

What is new in version 3.20.1:

• Fix translations, broken by 3.20.0.

What is new in version 3.16.2:

• Fix translation not getting applied
• Fix schema translations
• Translation updates

What is new in version 3.16.0:

• Translation updates

What is new in version 3.14.0:

• Translation updates

What is new in version 3.14 RC:

• Fix launching from gnome-shell in interactive mode (Kalev Lember)
• Parse delay cmdline parameter correctly (Ryan Lortie)
• Parse filename cmdline parameter correctly (Matthias Clasen)
• Remove duplicate cmdline parsing (Dominique Leuenberger)
• Add missing desktop file category (Elad Alfassa)

What is new in version 3.14 Beta 1:

• Don't use deprecated GTK+ API (Matthias Clasen)
• Port commandline handling to GApplication (Matthias Clasen)
• Make DBus activatable (Matthias Clasen)
• Implement g_application_activate() (Michael Catanzaro)
• Translation updates

What is new in version 3.12.0:

• Translation updates

What is new in version 3.10.1:

• Add a --version option (Thomas Hindoe Paaboel Andersen)
• Translation updates

Requirements:

• GTK+