ksnip

Version v1.9.0 - Work in Progress

Ksnip is a Qt-based cross-platform screenshot tool that provides many annotation features for your screenshots.

Features

Latest ksnip version contains following features:

• Supports Linux (X11, Plasma Wayland, GNOME Wayland and xdg-desktop-portal Wayland), Windows and macOS.
• Screenshot of a custom rectangular area that can be drawn with mouse cursor.
• Screenshot of last selected rectangular area without selecting again.
• Screenshot of the screen/monitor where the mouse cursor is currently located.
• Screenshot of full-screen, including all screens/monitors.
• Screenshot of window that currently has focus.
• Screenshot of window under mouse cursor.
• Screenshot with or without mouse cursor.
• Capture mouse cursor as annotation item that can be moved and deleted.
• Customizable capture delay for all capture options.
• Upload screenshots directly to imgur.com in anonymous or user mode.
• Upload screenshots via custom user defined scripts.
• Command-line support, for capturing screenshots and saving to default location, filename and format.
• Filename wildcards for Year ($Y), Month ($M), Day ($D), Time ($T) and Counter (multiple # characters for number with zero-leading padding).
• Print screenshot or save it to PDF/PS.
• Annotate screenshots with pen, marker, rectangles, ellipses, texts and other tools.
• Annotate screenshots with stickers and add custom stickers.
• Obfuscate image regions with blur and pixelate.
• Add effects to image (Drop Shadow, Grayscale or Border).
• Add watermarks to captured images.
• Global hotkeys for capturing screenshots (currently only for Windows and X11).
• Tabs for screenshots and images.
• Open existing images via dialog, drag-and-drop or paste from clipboard.
• Run as single instance application (secondary instances send cli parameter to primary instance).
• Pin screenshots in frameless windows that stay atop other windows.
• User-defined actions for taking screenshot and post-processing.
• Many configuration options.

Supported Screenshot Types

Installing Binaries

Binaries can be downloaded from the release page here. Currently RPM, DEB and AppImage for Linux, zipped EXE for Windows and APP for macOS in a DMG package is available.

Continuous build

All supported binaries are built for every pushed commit, to be found at the top of the release page. Continuous build artifacts are not fully tested and in most cases they are work in progress, so use them with caution.

AppImage (Linux)

To use AppImages, make them executable and run them, no installation required. $ chmod a+x ksnip*.AppImage $ ./ksnip*.AppImage

More info about setting to executable can be found here.

RPM (Linux)

Just install them via RPM and use. $ rpm -Uvh ksnip*.rpm $ ksnip

DEB (Linux)

Just install them via dpkg and start using. $ sudo dpkg -i ksnip*.deb $ ksnip

Snap (Linux)

The usual method for Snaps, will install the latest version: $ sudo snap install ksnip

The continuous build version is also available as edge, in order to install it you need to provide the edge flag: $ sudo snap install ksnip --edge

Snap startup time can be sped up and console output cleaned up from following error Could not create AF_NETLINK socket (Permission denied) by running the following commands: $ snap connect ksnip:network-observe $ snap connect ksnip:network-manager-observe

If you need to save screenshots to a removable media, the following additional connection is required: $ snap connect ksnip:removable-media

This only needs to be done once and connects some Snap plugs which are currently not auto-connected.

Flatpak (Linux)

The usual method for Flatpaks will install the latest version: $ flatpak install flathub org.ksnip.ksnip

Then just start it: $ flatpak run org.ksnip.ksnip

EXE (Windows)

The EXE file with all required dependencies comes in a zipped package, which just need to be unzipped with your favorite unpacking tool. Ksnip can then be started by just double-clicking ksnip.exe.

APP (macOS)

The app file comes in a DMG package which needs to be opened and the ksnip.app file needs to be dragged and dropped into the "Application" folder. After that the application can be started by double clicking ksnip.app

Homebrew Cask (macOS)

Just install via Homebrew and start using from your "Applications" folder. $ brew install --cask ksnip

Dependencies

ksnip depends on kImageAnnotator and kColorPicker which needs to be installed before building ksnip from source. Installation instructions can be found on the Github pages.

Building from source

1. Get latest release from GitHub by cloning the repo: $ git clone https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip
2. Change to repo directory: $ cd ksnip
3. Make new build directory and enter it: $ mkdir build && cd build
4. Create the makefile and build the project: $ cmake .. && make
5. Now install the application, eventually you need to run it with sudo: $ sudo make install
6. Run the application: $ ksnip

Translations

As with all continuous translations, contributors are always welcome! For translations Weblate is used.

For translations of annotator-related texts, please refer to kImageAnnotator

Known Issues

X11

1. Snipping area with transparent background doesn't work when compositor is turned off, freeze background is used in that case.

macOS

1. Snipping area with transparent background doesn't work, freeze background is always used. Issue #151
2. Second activation of snipping area doesn't get focus, you need to switch to the right side in order to see the snipping area. Issue #152
3. Mouse cursor is always captured. Issue #153

Wayland

1. Portal and Native Screenshots not working under KDE Plasma >= 5.80. The issue is coming from a recent change in KDE Plasma that prevents access to DBUS Interfaces responsible for taking screenshots. This issue is going to be fixed in future Plasma releases for the Portal Screenshots. Workaround for making the Portal Screenshots work is adding the string X-KDE-DBUS-Restricted-Interfaces=org.kde.kwin.Screenshot to the /usr/share/applications/org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.kde.desktop file and then restarting. Don't forget to enforce Portal screenshots in settings. Issue #424
2. Under Gnome Wayland copying images to clipboard and then pasting them somewhere might not work. This happens currently with native Wayland. A workaround is using XWayland by starting ksnip like this QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb /usr/bin/ksnip or switch to XWayland completely by exporting that variable export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb. Issue #416

Discussion

If you have general questions, ideas or just want to talk about ksnip, please use Discussion for that.

Bug report

Please report any bugs or feature requests related to the annotation editor on the kImageAnnotator GitHub page under the "Issue" section. All other bugs or feature requests can be reported on the ksnip GitHub page under the "Issue" section.

Contribution

Any contribution welcome, be it code, translations or other things. Currently this is needed:

• Write code and fix bugs for macOS.
• Write wiki entries and documentation for ksnip.
• Package ksnip for different operating systems and distros.

Donation

ksnip is a non-profitable copylefted libre software project, and still has some costs that need to be covered, like domain costs or hardware costs for cross-platform support. If you want to help or just want appreciate the work being done by treating developers to a beer or coffee, you can do that here, donations are always welcome :)