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I need a Linux program to take screenshots with these caveats:

  • Pressing PrintScreen should capture screen without further input (no modal window asking where to save or asking if I need to save to clipboard, etc.)
  • Screen captured should be automatically saved to a image file in a particular directory.
  • Saved files must be automatically numbered to avoid duplicated files, so I don't have to type the file name.
  • Bonus points if the program has a simple image editor to add circles, arrows, crop and so on.
  • Bonus points if the program does not require a paid license.

Simply put, just pressing the PrintScreen key a image file is created in a folder without any questions.

I can do this in Windows with a program called PickPic, I was wondering an alternative for Linux. Any suggestion?

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    Shutter seems to do that by default, see How to change the keyboard shortcut to take screenshots with Shutter? on AskUbuntu. It also comes with the kind of editor you asked about (which is how I often use it: snap, adjust, save). Comes via the standard repos (not sure about the latest distros, but at least I find it directly via apt). So no paid license either.
    – Izzy
    Jul 2, 2020 at 21:33

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Scrot should fulfill your requirements.

The only thing you may have to do is map the Print Screen keypress to a custom action. For example in Xfce you would go to Settings > Keyboard > Application shortcuts.

In this example you can see that I am using xfce4-screenshooter and I have defined shortcuts for Print Screen and CtrlPrint Screen.

That depends on your desktop environment. The default setting is probably to capture screenshots to the clipboard.

Xfce application shortcuts

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  • Thanks for sharing, that's an interesting approach being console based. Definitely going to man that scrot. Also thanks to the author of scrot for keeping the name of his program short.
    – ordago
    Jul 2, 2020 at 13:06

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