Scrot

Original author(s) Tom Gilbert
Developer(s) Tom Gilbert
Initial release 26 October 2000 (2000-10-26)
Stable release 0.8 / 23 June 2003 (2003-06-23)
Development status Unmaintained
Written in C
Operating system Unix-like
Platform X Window System
Available in English
Type Screen capturing
License BSD License
Website www.linuxbrit.co.uk/scrot/

Scrot is a minimalistic command line screen capturing application. It allows substantial degree of flexibility by specifying parameters on command line, including the ability to invoke a third-party utility to manipulate the resulting screenshot.[1]

Description

The features of the program include the ability to limit the scope of capturing to a specific screen area, to set the delay (if needed to capture some menu or another UI element which is shown only when focused) and to specify the filename template using wildcards (including those of strftime function from the C standard library).[2] The other features include creating the thumbnails of the taken screenshots and specifying the quality of the resulted image if lossy format is required.[3]

The scrot utility follows the UNIX philosophy principles, formulated by Doug McIlroy: the only thing it does is screen capturing, though it allows to specify a command for further manipulations with a resulting file.[4]

The ability to control scrot from command line allows user to run it over the network with the tools like OpenSSH to get a screenshot of remote desktop[5] or execute it as the window manager command binding.[6]

Usage example

This is how one can send a screenshot of a visual bug to the tech support with a one line command:

$ bugid="#2014244" scrot -cd 10 -s "/tmp/bug ${bugid} %d %B %Y T %R UTC.png" \
  -e "echo See the screenshot for the bug report ${bugid} | mutt -s 'Bug ${bugid}' -a '%f' -- support && rm '%f'"

This command would let the user specify a window to capture, wait 10 seconds, capture the selected window, save the file to "bug #2014244 22 February 2012 T 19:04 UTC.png" in "/tmp", send it to the person called support in mutt configuration file and remove it only if sent successfully.

Options

Like most UNIX utilities scrot accepts parameters from command line:[3]

-h, --help
display help message
-v, --version
display version number
-b, --border
include window border in the screenshot
-c, --count
display a countdown timer when used with delay
-d, --delay seconds
delay the screen capturing
-e command
execute command after taking screenshot
-q, --quality percentage
set the quality/compression options for the output file
-m, --multidisp
capture of each of the Xinerama displays and join to the single output file
-s, --select
interactively select a window or rectangle with the mouse
-t, --thumb percentage
generate a thumbnail of the given size ratio

See also

References

  1. ^ Kevan, Ben (2010-06-30). "screenshot with scrot – a command line tool for screenshots". Free Techie. http://www.freetechie.com/blog/screenshots-with-scrot-a-command-line-tool-for-screenshots/. Retrieved 2011-12-17. 
  2. ^ Qian, Kurt (2009-07-06). "Using Scrot, the Screen Shot Command Line Utility for Linux". ITNewb. http://www.itnewb.com/v/Using-Scrot-the-Screen-Shot-Command-Line-Utility-for-Linux. Retrieved 2011-12-17. 
  3. ^ a b Deutsch, Karl (July 2007). Casad, Joe. ed. "TYPE CHEESE" (PDF). Linux Magazine (Munich, Germany: Linux New Media) (80): 84, 85. http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/80/Console_Screenshots_with_Scrot.pdf. Retrieved 2011-12-17. Lay summary. 
  4. ^ "Take screenshots in Linux with Scrot". Linux And Friends. 2008-10-25. http://linuxandfriends.com/2008/10/25/take-screenshots-in-linux-with-scrot/. Retrieved 2011-12-17. 
  5. ^ Ballas, Alex (2010-11-09). "Scrot and Team Viewer". http://www.alex.ballas.org/2010/11/09/scrot-and-team-viewer/. Retrieved 2011-12-17. 
  6. ^ Richmond, Gary (2007-09-04). "How to take screenshots with Scrot". Free Software Magazine. http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/how_to_take_screenshots_with_scrot. Retrieved 2011-12-17.