Cropshot

A screenshot utility for Wayland displays.

Freezing captures the screen first, so you crop a still that cannot change. Selecting takes the pointer and the keyboard away from whatever you were pointing at, and much of what is worth capturing exists only while it holds them.

Install

sudo make install

Needs Python 3 and Pillow (python3-pil on Debian and Ubuntu, pip install Pillow otherwise). grim and slurp come from the same package names on every distribution that ships them.

Examples

cropshot                       # a region, named for the time it was taken
cropshot --freeze              # a region, chosen on a still of the screen
cropshot --screen --cursor     # every output, pointer included
cropshot shot.png              # named
cropshot --clipboard           # copy instead of saving
cropshot shot.png --clipboard  # both
cropshot -                     # PNG on stdout
cropshot --delay 3             # select now, capture three seconds later

Where captures go

With no FILE the capture is named for the time it was taken and saved to $XDG_SCREENSHOTS_DIR, read from the environment or from user-dirs.dirs, or to $HOME when neither sets it. --directory overrides that for one run.

The path is printed on stdout, and an existing file of that name is replaced without asking.

The clipboard is never written unless --clipboard asks for it.

Delay

The wait always comes immediately before the capture, which puts it in a different place in each mode:

• Cropping: select, wait, capture. The region can fill while you wait.
• Cropping with --freeze: wait, capture, select. Time to open what you want photographed before the picture is taken.
• Whole screen: wait, capture.

Requires

Needs	For
grim	every capture
Pillow	every capture
slurp	selecting a region
wl-clipboard	--clipboard
sway, and imv or feh	--freeze

Every mode except --freeze works on any wlroots compositor. --freeze needs sway. A live selection asks grim for the selected rectangle alone, so nothing outside it is captured even for a moment.

Freezing is sway-specific. The viewer is fullscreened through swaymsg and its rectangle checked against the output before a coordinate is trusted, because a viewer's own fullscreen request can be quietly ignored — which leaves the still tiled, and every selection landing somewhere other than where it looks. When that check fails cropshot refuses to crop, because a crop from the wrong coordinates looks exactly like a successful screenshot.

The full frame lives in /dev/shm and is removed on every exit path, including a cancelled selection. Only the crop is written anywhere.

Licence

NICE Licence (NICE Is Copycentral Enforced) — MIT-style permissive, with one extra condition: this code may never be placed under copyleft terms. Use it anywhere, commercially or otherwise, except in works whose licence would require this code's source to be made available.