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Matifou
Asked: 2020-08-20 10:20:36 +0800 CST

Screenshot: take picture of current monitor/current window only in 20.04?

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I want to take a screenshot of only active screen, or ideally only the active window. I am happy to use a specific combination of keys to do it, although ideal would be to set this as default.

According to the documentation, it is possible to do this using Alt+Print Screen. This does not seem to work with Ubuntu 20.04: I get a shot of my two screens. Is there something wrong on my side, or is the documentation not updated?

Second, I tried to set this by default in dconf: org/gnome/gnome-screenshot. I see there is a take-window-shot option, but it seems deprecated? Why would they deprecate that? Is there no other option? Or should I look for an alternative screenshot utility?

Thanks!

gnome screenshot 20.04

2 Answers

  1. ALT + PRT SC is the correct shortcut to take a screenshot of the active window.

    The screenshot is automatically saved in ~/Pictures

    I just confirmed this using Ubuntu 20.04.1 in a liveUSB session (GNOME).

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  2. The default button for screenshot can be checked in settings. Press super key (windows button on PC or command button on mac), and type shortcut and select keyboard shortcuts.

    Start typing screenshot and shortcuts related to screenshots will appear in front of you.

    If you want to enable custom shortcuts, then erase the screenshot typed earlier and scroll down to bottom and click the plus sign at the very bottom. For the name field enter screenshot full (or whatever you wish to name it) and in the command section type gnome-screenshot and click on the set shortcut and press the key combination you want to take screenshot of the whole screen.

    If you want to take screenshot of an area which you want to select (a crosshair will appear and then you have to press and drag to select an area and screenshot will be taken of this area only), then instead of just gnome-screenshot type gnome-screenshot -a and then select the key combination you want.

    If you use gnome-screenshot -w in the command field then it will take the screenshot of the current windows which is highlighted.

    All these screenshot will be saved to the Pictures folder in the home directory.

    Just as we used -a and -w at the end of gnome-screenshot command, there are several others called as flags. Open terminal and type gnome-screenshot -h and this will display all the available flags.

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