Flameshot: an excellent tool to capture and edit screenshots

flameshot

Flameshot is a powerful and simple to use screen capture software for Linux. It can run on most current Linux distributions.

Flameshot is a screen capture tool based on QT5 and is written in C ++. It is designed to be handled correctly by users with little or a lot of experience, and of course, it is free software.

This tool we offers the option that while creating a snapshot you can edit it, without having to save the imageThat is, create and edit in a single window or on the fly.

flameshot includes features such as notes (you can draw lines, arrows, blur or enhance text, etc. on the image), upload the capture to Imgur, and more.

This gives us the possibility to use geometric areas with colors of our choice. What makes this tool different from other similar programs is its interface, which is simple and intuitive.

The program offers us a very useful GUI, but also can be controlled from the command line. It is compatible with X11, as well as support, still experimental, for Wayland for Gnome and Plasma.

Among its main characteristics we can highlight the following:

  • Customizable appearance.
  • Easy to use.
  • In-app screenshot editing.
  • DBus interface.
  • Upload to Imgur

How to install flameshot on Ubuntu 18.10 and derivatives?

For those who are interested in being able to install this tool on their systems we can do it in a few different methods.

The first is install the application from Ubuntu repositories since this tool is within them, this method is also valid for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and derivatives.

Just open a terminal and in it type the following command:

sudo apt install flameshot

Another method we have to install this application is by directly downloading the deb package that we can find directly on GitHub the latest version available. To do this in a terminal we are going to type:

wget https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot/releases/download/v0.6.0/flameshot_0.6.0_bionic_x86_64.deb -O flameshot.deb

Now we proceed to install the deb package with the following command:

sudo dpkg -i flameshot.deb

And in case of having problems with the dependencies we can solve them with:

sudo apt-get install -f

flameshot setting 0.6

El The last method we have to obtain this tool is by compiling the application on our own, for this it is necessary to previously download some dependencies:

sudo apt install g++ build-essential qt5-default qt5-qmake qttools5-dev-tools
sudo apt install libqt5dbus5 libqt5network5 libqt5core5a libqt5widgets5 libqt5gui5 libqt5svg5-dev
sudo apt install git openssl ca-certificates

Done this now we are going to download the source code of the application and we are going to compile it with:

git clone https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot.git
cd flameshot
mkdir build
cd build
qmake ../
sudo make
sudo make install

Keyboard shortcuts

Application We can handle it with the help of some keyboard shortcuts, which are the following along with the action they perform:

Arrow keys → Move selection 1px.

  • SHIFT + arrow key → Resize selection 1px.
  • CTRL + C → Copy to clipboard.
  • ESC → Close capture.
  • CTRL + S → Save selection as a file.
  • CTRL + Z → Undo the last modification.
  • Right-click → Show Color Picker.
  • Mouse wheel → Change the thickness of the tool.

Terminal commands

Also, as mentioned, the application can be used from the terminal, for this we can use the following commands.

These are some examples:

Capture with the GUI

flameshot gui

Capture with the GUI and save to a path

flameshot gui -p ~/ruta/de/la/captura

Capture full screen and save to clipboard and to a path

flameshot full -c -p ~/ ruta/de/la/captura

Capture the screen containing the mouse and print the image (bytes) in PNG format:

flameshot screen -r

Capture screen number 1 and copy it to clipboard:

flameshot screen -n 1 -c

Open GUI with a 2 second delay:

flameshot gui -d 2000

Full screen capture with custom save path (no GUI) and delayed:

flameshot full -p ~ /ruta/de/la/captura -d 5000

If you want to know more you can run the following command in the terminal:

flameshot --help

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