A simple, free screen capture tool for Windows and Linux. Capture a region or a window, add annotations, crop, resize, and keep your screenshots in a library. Output is flattened PNG. MIT licensed.
(Sample captures, drawn for this page.)
Contents: Install · Quick start · Capturing · The editor · The library · Settings · Tray icon · Command line · Where things are stored · About and licence · Troubleshooting · Development
Supported: Windows 10/11 and Linux with an X11 session (Linux Mint, Ubuntu, …). Not supported yet: Wayland sessions and macOS (see Development).
sudo apt install python3-venv libxcb-cursor0
wget -qO- https://github.com/jtylek/ScreenCapture/releases/latest/download/screencapture-linux.tar.gz | tar xz
cd screencapture && ./install.sh --autostartThat's it: start ScreenCapture from the menu (or run screencapture). To update, run the same commands again.
- The installer works for your user only, no
sudo. It sets up a private Python environment in~/.local/share/screencapture(needs internet), ascreencapturecommand in~/.local/binand a menu entry. --autostartis optional: it starts the app quietly in the tray at login, which the capture hotkey needs.- If the
screencapturecommand is not found right after installing, log out and back in. - Set your capture hotkey in Library → Settings (gear icon); see Settings for using PrintScreen.
Alternative that always works: add a custom system shortcut with the command
~/.local/bin/screencapture --capture. - Uninstall:
cd screencapture && ./uninstall.sh(--purgealso deletes your saved screenshots).
Download ScreenCapture-Setup.exe (always the latest release; older versions are on the Releases page) and run it. It installs per user (no admin needed) and optionally adds a desktop shortcut and start-at-login. Set the capture hotkey in Library → Settings (gear icon). If you want PrintScreen and Windows already uses it for the Snipping Tool, turn that off in Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard → Use the Print screen button to open screen capture.
Build the installer yourself on Windows (needs Python 3.9+ and Inno Setup):
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File packaging\build_windows.ps1Pushing a v* tag, or running Actions → Build installers, builds the installer and the Linux bundle in GitHub
Actions and attaches them to a release.
- Start ScreenCapture. It lives in the system tray and opens the Library window.
- Press your capture hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+Print), or click Capture region in the Library.
- Drag a rectangle over what you want, or just click a window.
- The capture is put on the clipboard right away (paste it anywhere with Ctrl+V) and opens in the editor: add arrows, boxes, text, blur, crop. The Library button in the editor toolbar opens the library.
- After annotating, Copy it to the clipboard again (Ctrl+Shift+C) to paste the edited version, and Save it to the library (Ctrl+S). Turn on Automatically save new captures to the Library in Settings to skip that step.
Start a capture with the hotkey, the Capture region button, the tray menu, or screencapture --capture. The screen
freezes and dims, and the app's own windows (Library, editors) get out of the way.
Capturing ScreenCapture itself (for example its Settings or About dialog): open the dialog, then press the capture hotkey. While one of the app's dialogs is open nothing is hidden, so the dialog is in the picture, and Esc / right-click still cancel as usual.
| Do this | Result |
|---|---|
| Move the mouse over a window | The window is highlighted |
| Click | Captures the highlighted window |
| Drag | Captures the rectangle you drag. A label shows its size in pixels |
| Esc or right-click | Cancels |
- With several monitors, every monitor is dimmed and you choose on any of them. A selection stays on one monitor.
- A capture cancels itself after 60 seconds without mouse activity, when the computer goes to sleep, and when monitors are added or removed, so the dimmed screen can never get stuck.
- Capture full screen (tray menu or Library → Capture screen) takes the whole monitor the mouse is on. Capture full screen in 3 s waits three seconds first, so you can open a menu or hover a tooltip.
- Captures are saved at the monitor's real pixel size, also on scaled / high-DPI displays.
- The new capture is copied to the clipboard and opened in the editor at once. It goes into the library when you save it there, or automatically if you turn on Automatically save new captures to the Library in Settings.
The top row holds the tools, resize and zoom, the second row the style, edit and save buttons. Hover any button for its name.
Pick a tool, then drag on the image (Text and Step: click).
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Select | Click an item to select it, drag it to move it. Drag on empty space to select several |
| Rectangle / Ellipse | Outline shapes |
| Arrow / Line | Drag from the start to the end. The arrow head is at the end |
| Text | Click where the text should go and type. Click elsewhere or press Esc to finish. Double-click a text with the Select tool to edit it |
| Highlight | A translucent yellow marker over an area |
| Blur | Pixelates the part of the screenshot under it, to hide names, numbers or passwords |
| Step | A numbered circle (1, 2, 3, …) for step-by-step instructions. Click to place the next number |
Style controls (second row), applied to what you draw next:
- Color button opens a color picker. Line width (1–40 px) applies to rectangles, ellipses, arrows and lines.
- Text font, text size (6–300 px), Bold and Italic. They apply to new text and to the text items you have selected.
- Click an item to select it (Ctrl+click adds to the selection), or drag a box around several. Ctrl+A selects all.
- Drag selected items to move them.
- Remove them with the Delete key, the trash button, or right-click → Delete. Right-click also offers Select all and Delete all annotations.
- Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z) cover everything: drawing, moving, deleting, text styling, crop and cut.
- Crop – drag the area to keep. Drag its edges or corners to adjust, or its inside to move it. Press Enter or the green check button to apply, Esc to cancel.
- Cut out a vertical strip / horizontal strip – drag across the part you want to remove. A red hatched band shows what will go. Adjust its edges, then Enter or the check button. The two sides are joined together, so you can remove boring parts from the middle of a long capture. Annotations inside the removed strip are deleted, the ones beyond it move over. Undo brings everything back.
- Resize image (Ctrl+R) scales the whole picture to a new size, in pixels or in percent. With Keep aspect ratio on (the default) changing the width changes the height too. Annotations are scaled together with the picture: their positions follow it, and rectangles, text, arrows and step circles keep their shape. If you turn the aspect ratio lock off and squash the picture, the annotations move with it but are not distorted.
- Canvas size (Ctrl+Shift+R) changes the size of the picture's surface without scaling the picture. Make it bigger to add empty space around the image (for example room for notes or arrows), or smaller to cut the edges off. Choose where the current image stays in the new canvas with the 3×3 position buttons, and the color of the added area. Annotations move with the image.
- Both open a small dialog with the current size, show the result before you press OK, and can be undone. Sizes are limited to 20 000 pixels per side and 120 megapixels in total.
- Buttons next to the tools: zoom out, the current percentage, zoom in, fit (whole image in the window) and 1:1 (real pixels).
- Ctrl + mouse wheel zooms around the mouse. Ctrl+
+/ Ctrl+-step the zoom, Ctrl+0 fits the image, Ctrl+1 shows 100%. The range is 5%–1600%. - A big capture opens fitted to the window and stays fitted when you resize it, until you zoom by hand.
- When zoomed in, pan by holding Space and dragging, or with the middle mouse button.
| Button | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Copy | Ctrl+Shift+C | Puts the image, with the annotations, on the clipboard |
| Save | Ctrl+S | Writes the result back to the library entry (replacing the original capture) |
| Save as… | Ctrl+Shift+S | Saves a PNG or JPEG anywhere you like |
The title bar shows an asterisk while there are unsaved changes, and closing the editor asks whether to save them to the library. Edits are flattened into the PNG: reopening a saved capture shows one picture, not separate objects.
Every capture is saved automatically and shown as a thumbnail, newest first. The library keeps the latest 500 captures and removes older ones.
- Double-click (or select and press Enter) opens a capture in the editor again. Open in editor does the same.
- Copy puts the selected capture on the clipboard. Delete (also the Delete key) removes the selected captures after asking. Select several with Ctrl+click or Shift+click.
- Right-click a thumbnail for Open in editor, Copy to clipboard and Delete.
- Open folder shows the library folder in your file manager, so you can drag the PNG files into an email or a chat.
- Capture region and Capture screen start a capture from the library window.
- About shows the version, the licence and the project page (see below).
- The sun / moon button switches between light and dark mode. The status bar shows the capture count and your hotkey.
Open Library → Settings (gear icon). OK saves, Cancel undoes the changes. Theme and icon size preview while you pick them.
- Theme – follow the system, light or dark.
- Icon size – small, medium (default) or large toolbar icons.
- Startup – start ScreenCapture quietly in the tray when you sign in to Windows / Linux, so the hotkey is always ready.
- New captures – Automatically add new captures to the clipboard (on by default) and Automatically save new captures to the Library (off by default; otherwise a capture is only in the library once you save it from the editor).
- Capture hotkey – a global shortcut that starts a region / window capture from any application. Click the box and press
the keys. Clear turns the hotkey off, Default restores
Ctrl+Shift+Print. It works on Windows and Linux/X11 (not Wayland).Ctrl+Alt+letteris refused because it is AltGr on many keyboards. If the combination is already taken, the dialog says so.
Using PrintScreen as the hotkey:
- Linux Mint: the system holds that key for its own screenshot tool. Clear the system screenshot shortcut under Keyboard → Shortcuts first. ScreenCapture tells you when a key is taken.
- Windows: Windows may be holding PrintScreen for the Snipping Tool. Turn that off under Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard → Use the Print screen button to open screen capture.
The icon in the system tray (menu bar area) opens the Library when clicked. Its menu has Capture region / window, Capture full screen, Capture full screen in 3 s, Library, Settings…, About and Quit. Closing the Library or editor windows keeps the app running in the tray (when your desktop has one); use Quit to stop it.
| Command | Does |
|---|---|
screencapture |
Opens the Library |
screencapture --capture |
Starts a region / window capture |
screencapture --fullscreen |
Captures the monitor under the mouse |
screencapture --library |
Shows the Library |
screencapture --tray |
Starts quietly in the tray (used for start at login) |
screencapture --quit |
Stops the running instance |
Only one instance runs: these commands talk to the one that is already running, so they are what keyboard shortcuts and launchers should call.
| Linux | Windows | |
|---|---|---|
| Captures (PNG) | ~/.local/share/ScreenCapture/ScreenCapture/library/ |
%APPDATA%\ScreenCapture\ScreenCapture\library\ |
| Log file | ~/.local/share/ScreenCapture/ScreenCapture/screencapture.log |
%APPDATA%\ScreenCapture\ScreenCapture\screencapture.log |
The library's Open folder button opens the captures folder. Settings are kept in the usual per-user place (the registry
on Windows, ~/.config/ScreenCapture/ on Linux).
ScreenCapture is free software by Janusz Tylek, released under the MIT license: you may use, copy, modify and share it, also commercially, as long as the licence text stays with it. Library → About shows the version and this information.
Updates, help and bug reports: https://github.com/jtylek/ScreenCapture
ScreenCapture writes a log (including Python tracebacks if it ever crashes hard) to the log file above. Attach it when
reporting a problem. On Linux you can also run screencapture in a terminal to see errors directly.
- The hotkey does nothing / "key is taken": another program or the system owns that combination, see
Settings. Pick another one, or bind a system shortcut to
screencapture --capture. - Capture overlay stuck: press Esc or right-click. It also cancels itself after 60 seconds of inactivity.
- Fatal Python error: none_dealloc (Linux): PySide6 6.12.0 has a bug that crashes Python versions older than 3.12
(Linux Mint 21 / Ubuntu 22.04 ship 3.10), so the installer picks an older working PySide6 there. If you installed
earlier, run
~/.local/share/screencapture/venv/bin/pip install "PySide6-Essentials<6.12"or simply run./install.shagain.
pip install -e ".[dev]" && QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen pytestThe sample screenshots above are regenerated from the real windows with docs/make_screenshots.py
(xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 1700x1100x24" env PYTHONPATH=. python docs/make_screenshots.py).
Not implemented yet: Wayland (needs the xdg-desktop-portal screenshot API), macOS (window capture, the global hotkey, start at login, an app bundle and the Screen Recording permission flow are missing), resizing handles on existing annotations, scrolling capture.