Flameshot

Flameshot

Powerful yet simple to use screenshot software.

Preview

Index

• Features
• Usage
  • Usage on Windows
  • Usage on Hyprland / Sway / wlroots
  • Usage on minimal X11 window managers
  • CLI configuration
  • Config file
• Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Local
  • Global
    • On KDE Plasma desktop
    • On Gnome (Ubuntu, Fedora and more)
    • On XFCE 4
    • On Fluxbox
• Considerations
• Installation
  • Prebuilt Packages
  • Packages from Repository
  • MacOS
  • Windows
• Compilation
  • Dependencies
    • Compile-time
    • Run-time
    • Optional
    • Debian
    • Fedora
    • Arch
  • Build
  • Install
• License
• Privacy Policy
• Code Signing Policy
• Contribute
• Acknowledgment

Features

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

Usage

Executing the command flameshot without parameters will launch a running instance of the program in the background without taking actions. If your desktop environment provides tray area, a tray icon will also appear in the tray for users to perform configuration and management.

Example commands:

• Capture with GUI:

  flameshot gui
  

• Capture with GUI with custom save path:

  flameshot gui -p ~/myStuff/captures
  

• Capture with GUI after 2 seconds delay (can be useful to take screenshots of mouse hover tooltips, etc.):

  flameshot gui -d 2000
  

• Fullscreen capture with custom save path (no GUI) and delayed:

  flameshot full -p ~/myStuff/captures -d 5000
  

• Fullscreen capture with custom save path copying to clipboard:

  flameshot full -c -p ~/myStuff/captures
  

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

  flameshot screen -r
  

• Capture the screen number 1 and copy it to the clipboard:

  flameshot screen -n 1 -c
  

In case of doubt choose the first or the second command as shortcut in your favorite desktop environment.

A systray icon will be in your system's panel while Flameshot is running. Do a right click on the tray icon and you'll see some menu items to open the configuration window and the information window. Check out the About window to see all available shortcuts in the graphical capture mode.

Usage on Windows

On Windows, flameshot.exe will behave as expected for all supported command-line arguments, but it will not output any text to the console. This is problematic if, for example, you are running flameshot.exe -h.

If you require console output, run flameshot-cli.exe instead. flameshot-cli.exe is a minimal wrapper around flameshot.exe that ensures all stdout is captured and output to the console.

Usage on Hyprland / Sway / wlroots

Please refer to this document for detailed instructions on how to set up Flameshot on Hyprland, Sway, and wlroots-based Wayland compositors.

Usage on minimal X11 window managers

On minimal X11 window managers (i3, dwm, xmonad, bspwm, ...), capturing may fail because no portal backend implements the Screenshot interface (errors such as "Could not locate the org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop service" or "Screenshot portal timed out"). Please refer to this document for the fix (enabling the legacy X11 capture).

CLI configuration

You can use the graphical menu to configure Flameshot, but alternatively you can use your terminal or scripts to do so.

• Open the configuration menu:

  flameshot config
  

• Show the initial help message in the capture mode:

  flameshot config --showhelp true
  

• For more information about the available options use the help flag:

  flameshot config -h
  

Config file

You can also edit some of the settings (like overriding the default colors) in the configuration file.
Linux path: ~/.config/flameshot/flameshot.ini.
Windows path: C:\Users\{YOURNAME}\AppData\Roaming\flameshot\flameshot.ini.

When copying over the config file from Linux to Windows or vice versa, make sure to correct the savePath variable,
so that the screenshots save in the right directory on your desired file system.

Keyboard shortcuts

Local

These shortcuts are available in GUI mode:

Keys	Description
P	Set the Pencil as paint tool
D	Set the Line as paint tool
A	Set the Arrow as paint tool
S	Set Selection as paint tool
R	Set the Rectangle as paint tool
C	Set the Circle as paint tool
M	Set the Marker as paint tool
T	Add text to your capture
B	Set Pixelate as the paint tool
←, ↓, ↑, →	Move selection 1px
Shift + ←, ↓, ↑, →	Resize selection 1px
Ctrl + Shift + ←, ↓, ↑, →	Symmetrically resize selection 2px
Esc	Quit capture
Ctrl + M	Move the selection area
Ctrl + C	Copy to clipboard
Ctrl + S	Save selection as a file
Ctrl + Z	Undo the last modification
Ctrl + Shift + Z	Redo the next modification
Ctrl + Q	Leave the capture screen
Ctrl + O	Choose an app to open the capture
Ctrl + Return	Commit text in text area
Ctrl + Backspace	Cancel current selection
Return	Upload the selection to Imgur
Spacebar	Toggle visibility of sidebar with options of the selected tool, color picker for the drawing color and history menu
G	Starts the color picker
Right Click	Show the color wheel
Mouse Wheel	Change the tool's thickness
Print screen	Capture Screen
Shift + Print	Screenshot History
Ctrl + drawing line, arrow or marker	Drawing only horizontally, vertically or diagonally
Ctrl + drawing rectangle or circle	Keeping aspect ratio

Shift + drag a handler of the selection area: mirror redimension in the opposite handler.

Global

• Windows: Prt Sc (fixed, cannot be changed) and Win + Shift + X (can be changed in the settings)
• macOS: cmd + Shift + X (can be changed in the settings)
• Linux: Flameshot doesn't yet support Prt Sc out of the box, but you can set this up with a bit of configuration:

On KDE Plasma desktop

To make configuration easier, there's a file in the repository that more or less automates this process. This file will assign the following hotkeys by default:

Keys	Description
Prt Sc	Start the Flameshot screenshot tool and take a screenshot
Ctrl + Prt Sc	Wait for 3 seconds, then start the Flameshot screenshot tool and take a screenshot
Shift + Prt Sc	Take a full-screen (all monitors) screenshot and save it
Ctrl + Shift + Prt Sc	Take a full-screen (all monitors) screenshot and copy it to the clipboard

If you don't like the defaults, they can be changed later.

Steps for using the configuration:

1. The configuration file makes Flameshot automatically save screenshots to ~/Pictures/Screenshots without opening the save dialog. Make sure that folder exists by running:

   mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Screenshots
   

   (If you don't like the default location, you can skip this step and configure your preferred directory later.)

2. Download the configuration file:

   cd ~/Desktop
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flameshot-org/flameshot/master/docs/shortcuts-config/flameshot-shortcuts-kde.khotkeys
   

3. Make sure you have the khotkeys installed using your package manager to enable custom shortcuts in KDE Plasma.

4. Go to System Settings → Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts.

5. If an entry exists for Spectacle (the default KDE screenshot utility), you'll need to disable it because its shortcuts might conflict with Flameshot's. Do this by unchecking the Spectacle entry.

6. Click Edit → Import..., navigate to the configuration file and open it.

7. Now the Flameshot entry should appear in the list. Click Apply to apply the changes.

8. If you want to change the default hotkeys, you can expand the entry, select the appropriate action and modify it as you wish; the process is pretty self-explanatory.

9. If you installed Flameshot as a Flatpak, you will need to create a symlink to the command:

   ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.flameshot.Flameshot ~/.local/bin/flameshot
   

On Gnome (Ubuntu, Fedora and more)

To use Flameshot instead of the default screenshot application in Gnome we need to remove the binding on Prt Sc key, and then create a new binding for flameshot gui (adapted from Pavel's answer on AskUbuntu).

1. Remove the binding on Prt Sc:

   Go to Settings > Keyboard > View and Customise Shortcuts > Screenshots > Take a screenshot interactively and press backspace

2. Add custom binding on Prt Sc:

   Go to Settings > Keyboard > View and Customise Shortcuts > Custom shortcuts and press the '+' button at the bottom.

3. Name the command as you like it, e.g. flameshot. And in the command insert /usr/bin/flameshot gui or flatpak run org.flameshot.Flameshot gui if installed via flatpak.

4. Then click "Set Shortcut.." and press Prt Sc. This will show as "print".

Now every time you press Prt Sc, it will start the Flameshot GUI instead of the default application.

On XFCE 4

1. Go to Keyboard settings

2. Switch to the tab Application Shortcuts

3. Find the entry

   Command                        Shortcut
   xfce4-screenshooter -fd 1      Print
   

4. Replace xfce4-screenshooter -fd 1 with flameshot gui

Now every time you press Prt Sc it will start Flameshot GUI instead of the default application.

On Fluxbox

1. Edit your ~/.fluxbox/keys file

2. Add a new entry. Print is the key name, flameshot gui is the shell command; for more options see the fluxbox wiki.

   Print :Exec flameshot gui
   

3. Refresh Fluxbox configuration with Reconfigure option from the menu.

Considerations

• Experimental Gnome Wayland and Plasma Wayland support.

• If you are using Gnome you need to install the AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support extension in order to see the system tray icon.

• Press Enter or Ctrl + C when you are in a capture mode and you don't have an active selection and the whole desktop will be copied to your clipboard. Pressing Ctrl + S will save your capture to a file. Check the Shortcuts for more information.

• Flameshot works best with a desktop environment that includes D-Bus. See this article for tips on using Flameshot in a minimal window manager (dwm, i3, xmonad, etc).

• In order to speed up the first launch of Flameshot (D-Bus init of the app can be slow), consider starting the application automatically on boot.

  • Quick tip: If you don't have Flameshot to autostart at boot and you want to set keyboard shortcut, use the following as the command for the keybinding:

  ( flameshot &; ) && ( sleep 0.5s && flameshot gui )
  

Installation

Flameshot can be installed on Linux, Microsoft Windows, and macOS.

Prebuilt packages

Some prebuilt packages are provided on the release page of the GitHub project repository.

Packages from Repository

There are packages available in the repository of some Linux distributions:

• Arch: pacman -S flameshot
  • Snapshot also available via AUR: flameshot-git.
• Debian 10+: apt install flameshot
  • Package for Debian 9 ("Stretch") also available via stretch-backports.
• Ubuntu: apt install flameshot
  • A PPA supporting Ubuntu 22.04 and newer is provided by Quentin Lienhardt that offers an up-to-date version of flameshot.
• openSUSE: zypper install flameshot
• Void Linux: xbps-install flameshot
• Solus: eopkg it flameshot
• Fedora: dnf install flameshot
• NixOS: nix-env -iA nixos.flameshot
• ALT: su - -c "apt-get install flameshot"
• Snap/Flatpak/AppImage
• Docker
• Windows

macOS

• MacPorts: sudo port selfupdate && sudo port install flameshot
• Homebrew: brew install --cask flameshot

Note that because of macOS security features, you may not be able to open flameshot when installed using brew. If you see the message “flameshot” cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified. you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Applications folder (Finder > Go > Applications, or Shift+Command+A)
2. Right-Click on "flameshot.app" and choose "Open" from the context menu
3. In the dialog click "Open"

On MacOs 15 and above, you will have to go to system settings -> privacy and security after doing this and click "Open Anyway" or you can open flameshot first time with the following command.

sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/flameshot.app

After following all those steps above, flameshot will open without problems in your Mac.

Windows

• Scoop: scoop install flameshot

Expand this section to see what distros are using an up to date version of flameshot

Tray icon

Note that for the Flameshot icon to appear in your tray area, you should have a systray software installed. This is especially true for users who use minimal window managers such as dwm. In some Desktop Environment installations (e.g Gnome), the systray might be missing and you can install an application or plugin (e.g Gnome shell extension) to add the systray to your setup. It has been reported) that icon of some software, including Flameshot, does not show in gnome-shell-extension-appindicator.

Alternatively, in case you don't want to have a systray, you can always call Flameshot from the terminal. See Usage section.

Compilation

To build the application in your system, you'll need to install the dependencies needed for it and package names might be different for each distribution, see Dependencies below for more information. You can also install most of the Qt dependencies via their installer. If you were developing Qt apps before, you probably already have them.

This project uses CMake build system, so you need to install it in order to build the project (on most Linux distributions it is available in the standard repositories as a package called cmake). If your distribution provides too old version of CMake (e.g. Ubuntu or Debian) you can download it on the official website.

Also you can open and build/debug the project in a C++ IDE. For example, in Qt Creator you should be able to simply open CMakeLists.txt via Open File or Project in the menu after installing CMake into your system. More information about CMake projects in Qt Creator.

Dependencies

Compile-time

• Qt >= 6.2.4 (available by default on Ubuntu Jammy)
  • Development tools
• GCC >= 11
• CMake >= 3.22

Run-time

• Qt
  • SVG

Optional

• Git
• OpenSSL
• CA Certificates
• Qt Image Formats - for additional export image formats (e.g. tiff, webp, and more)

Debian

# Compile-time
apt install g++ cmake build-essential qt6-base-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools qt6-svg-dev qt6-tools-dev

# Run-time
apt install libkf6guiaddons-dev libqt6dbus6 libqt6network6 libqt6core6 libqt6widgets6 libqt6gui6 libqt6svg6 qt6-qpa-plugins

# Optional
apt install git openssl ca-certificates qt6-image-formats-plugins

Fedora

# Compile-time
dnf install gcc-c++ cmake qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel qt6-qttools qt6-linguist qt6-qttools-devel kf6-kguiaddons-devel

# Run-time
dnf install qt6-qtbase qt6-qtsvg kf6-kguiaddons

# Optional
dnf install git openssl ca-certificates qt6-qtimageformats

Arch

# Compile-time
pacman -S cmake base-devel git qt6-base qt6-tools kguiaddons

# Run-time
pacman -S qt6-svg

# Optional
pacman -S openssl ca-certificates qt6-imageformats

Nix

Development Shell:

# Without flakes:
nix-shell

# With flakes:
nix develop

# Build flameshot
nix build

# Build and run flameshot
nix run

macOS

First of all you need to install brew and then install the dependencies

brew install qt6
brew install cmake

Build

After installing all the dependencies, Flameshot can be built.

Installation/build dir

For the translations to be loaded correctly, the build process needs to be aware of where you want to install Flameshot.

# Directory where build files will be placed, may be relative
export BUILD_DIR=build

# Directory prefix where Flameshot will be installed. If you are just building and don't want to
# install, comment this environment variable.
# This excludes the bin/flameshot part of the install,
# e.g. in /opt/flameshot/bin/flameshot, the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is /opt/flameshot
# This must be an absolute path. Requires CMAKE 3.29.
export CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/flameshot

# Linux
cmake -S . -B "$BUILD_DIR" \
    && cmake --build "$BUILD_DIR"

#MacOS
cmake -S . -B "$BUILD_DIR" \
    -DQt6_DIR="$(brew --prefix qt6)/lib/cmake/Qt6" \
    && cmake --build "$BUILD_DIR"

When the cmake --build command has completed you can launch Flameshot from the project_folder/build/src folder.

Install

Note that if you install from source, there is no uninstaller, so consider installing to a custom directory.

To install into a custom directory

Make sure you are using cmake >= 3.29 and build Flameshot with $CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX set to the installation directory. If this is not done, the translations won't be found when using a custom directory. Then, run the following:

# !Build with CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX and use cmake >= 3.29! Using an older cmake will cause
# installation into the default /usr/local dir.

# You may need to run this with privileges
cmake --install "$BUILD_DIR"

To install to the default install directory

# You may need to run this with privileges
cmake --install "$BUILD_DIR"

FAQ

https://flameshot.org/docs/guide/faq/

License

• The main code is licensed under GPLv3+
• The logo of Flameshot is licensed under Free Art License v1.3
• The button icons are licensed under Apache License 2.0. See: https://github.com/google/material-design-icons
• The code at capture/capturewidget.cpp is based on https://github.com/ckaiser/Lightscreen/blob/master/dialogs/areadialog.cpp (GPLv2)
• The code at capture/capturewidget.h is based on https://github.com/ckaiser/Lightscreen/blob/master/dialogs/areadialog.h (GPLv2)
• I copied a few lines of code from KSnapshot regiongrabber.cpp revision 796531 (LGPL)
• Qt-Color-Widgets taken and modified from https://github.com/mbasaglia/Qt-Color-Widgets (see their license and exceptions in the project) (LGPL/GPL)

Info: If I take code from your project and that implies a relicense to GPLv3+, you can reuse my changes with the original previous license of your project applied.

Privacy Policy

This program will not transfer any information to other networked systems unless specifically requested by the user or the person installing or operating it.

Code Signing Policy

For Windows binaries, this program uses free code signing provided by SignPath.io, and a certificate by the SignPath Foundation.

Code signing is currently a manual process so not every patch release will be signed.

Contribute

If you want to contribute check the CONTRIBUTING.md

Acknowledgment

Thanks to those who have shown interest in the early development process:

• lupoDharkael
• Cosmo
• XerTheSquirrel
• The members of Sugus GNU/Linux
• ismatori

Thanks to sponsors:

• Namecheap
• JetBrains
• SignPath
• addy.io