Linux Mint: replacing gnome-screenshot

The default screenshot program on Mint doesn't really do it for me.

 

So I started investigating a better solution.

Don't get me wrong, gnome-screenshot is a perfectly capable program, but I think I can do better by replacing it with the program called 'scrot' (SCReenshOT).

For reference, I'm currently running Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.

Here are my personal requirements for screen capture:-

• select area to be captured with mouse,
• auto save file to unique file name,
• save file to a dedicated 'screenshots' folder,
• use 'Print Screen' as shortcut key ('Prt Sc' on my Entroware laptop).

The first step is to install scrot. Using a terminal:-

 $ sudo apt install scrot

Then I need to develop a suitable command line using scrot;

To create a unique file name I'm using date time to the nearest second:-

  %Y-%m:-%d_%H:%M:%S

 which gives: year-month-day_hour:minute:second

The image will be saved as a .png file to a folder named: _screenshots

The 's' switch instructs scrot to wait for an area to be manually selected. So the full command should be:-

 scrot -s '_screenshots/Screen_%Y-%m:-%d_%H:%M:%S.png'

...and sure enough, this works when tested in a terminal.

 

To develop a custom shortcut, select menu Preferences > System Settings > Keyboards > Shortcuts > Custom Shortcuts

Enter the new Keyboard shortcut details: enter a suitable name and paste in the command line

Enter a keyboard binding by pressing your chosen key/key combination: I've chosen to re-use the "Print Screen" key.

Note: this automatically destroys the original binding with gnome-screenshot.

Assuming it works, that's all there is.

but...

...isn't there always a but?

Although this works great on my Linux Mint laptop, over on my Peppermint machine something isn't quite right.

Instead of getting a cross-hair cursor, allowing me to select a capture area, I get a pointer. When the mouse is clicked, scrot captures a full-screen image.

As far as I can see, the difference is down to scrot versions: v0.8 on Peppermint compared to v1.7 on Mint.

These days, my Peppermint machine is only used for blogging, so I'm not too bothered (Google is largely blocked on my Mint laptop).