Why does scrot produce a black screen or fail on my system?

scrot uses X11 APIs that do not work under a Wayland session. Switch to grim (wlroots), Spectacle (KDE), or the GNOME built-in shortcuts, which all use proper Wayland capture interfaces.

How do I take a screenshot of a menu or tooltip that disappears when I switch windows?

Use a delay: 'flameshot gui --delay 3000' waits 3 seconds before activating, giving you time to open the menu. GNOME's overlay also has a delay slider in its interface.

Where does GNOME save screenshots by default?

GNOME Shell saves screenshots to ~/Pictures/Screenshots/ as timestamped PNG files. This path is not currently user-configurable from the Settings UI without installing gnome-screenshot.

Can Flameshot upload screenshots directly to an image host?

Yes. Flameshot supports uploading to Imgur out of the box. Click the upload icon in the annotation toolbar, or use 'flameshot gui' and select the upload button after selecting your region.

Does Flameshot work on all Wayland compositors?

Flameshot 12+ works on KDE Wayland reliably via the XDG portal. GNOME Wayland support improved in GNOME 43 but annotation overlay behavior can still vary. On wlroots compositors like Sway, grim is a more reliable choice.

How to Take Screenshots on Linux

Taking screenshots on Linux is straightforward once you know which tool fits your desktop and display server. The landscape changed meaningfully with the shift to Wayland: old standbys like scrot and import either break entirely or lose features, so you need Wayland-aware alternatives. This guide covers keyboard shortcuts built into GNOME and KDE, the cross-desktop Flameshot tool, and the command-line options that work reliably on both X11 and Wayland.

Built-in Screenshot Tools

GNOME (including Ubuntu 22.04+)

GNOME Shell 42 and later ships a native screenshot UI that works on both X11 and Wayland. No extra software needed.

Print Screen — opens the interactive screenshot overlay (select area, window, or full screen)
Alt + Print Screen — captures the focused window directly to ~/Pictures/Screenshots/
Shift + Print Screen — captures a region you draw with the mouse
Ctrl + any of the above — copies to clipboard instead of saving to disk

Screenshots land in ~/Pictures/Screenshots/ as timestamped PNG files. You can change the save path in Settings → Privacy → File History & Trash or via the gnome-screenshot preferences if you install that legacy package.

KDE Plasma (Spectacle)

KDE ships Spectacle, a fully featured screenshot app that handles Wayland through the XDG Desktop Portal.

Print Screen — opens Spectacle with a region-select prompt
Meta + Print Screen — captures the active window
Meta + Shift + Print Screen — full-screen capture

Spectacle lets you add a delay, annotate, and upload directly. Configure defaults under Applications → Spectacle → Configure.

Installing and Using Flameshot

Flameshot is a popular cross-desktop screenshot tool with built-in annotation: arrows, boxes, text, blur, and direct clipboard copy. It works on X11 and has Wayland support as of version 12 (with some caveats noted below).

Installation

Debian / Ubuntu:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install flameshot

Fedora / RHEL 9+ / Rocky Linux:

sudo dnf install flameshot

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S flameshot

Basic Usage

Launch the interactive capture mode:

flameshot gui

A crosshair appears. Click and drag to select a region, then use the toolbar to annotate. Press Enter or click the save icon to write the file; press the clipboard icon to copy directly.

Capture the full screen silently and save to a specific directory:

flameshot full --path ~/Pictures/screenshots

Capture with a 3-second delay (useful for capturing menus):

flameshot gui --delay 3000

Binding Flameshot to a Keyboard Shortcut

The most useful setup is binding flameshot gui to Print Screen. Steps vary by desktop:

GNOME: Go to Settings → Keyboard → View and Customize Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts, add a new entry with command flameshot gui and assign Print Screen. GNOME will ask you to confirm overriding the default binding.

KDE Plasma: Go to System Settings → Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts, create a new Command/URL shortcut, set the trigger to Print Screen, and the action to flameshot gui.

Screenshots on Wayland

Wayland's security model prevents apps from capturing screen content outside their own window without explicit compositor permission. This is intentional, but it breaks tools that use legacy X11 calls like XGetImage. Here is what works and what does not.

What Works Natively

GNOME Shell's built-in shortcuts — fully native, no workarounds needed
Spectacle on KDE — uses the org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot XDG portal, works correctly
Flameshot ≥ 12 on KDE Wayland — uses the portal; a system dialog asks for permission on first use
Flameshot on GNOME Wayland — works from GNOME 43+ via the portal, but the annotation overlay may appear on a separate surface rather than inline; behavior improves each release

Command-Line Tools on Wayland

scrot, import (ImageMagick), and gnome-screenshot older than version 41 do not work under a pure Wayland session. Use these alternatives instead:

grimshot (Sway / wlroots compositors):

sudo apt install grimshot   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo pacman -S grimshot    # Arch

# Capture a region and copy to clipboard
grimshot copy area

# Save a window screenshot
grimshot save window ~/Pictures/window.png

grim + slurp (lower-level, scriptable, wlroots):

sudo apt install grim slurp   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo pacman -S grim slurp     # Arch

# Interactive region select, save to file
grim -g "$(slurp)" ~/Pictures/region.png

spectacle from the command line on KDE Wayland:

# Capture full screen, no GUI, save to path
spectacle --fullscreen --background --nonotify --output ~/Pictures/shot.png

Checking Whether You Are on Wayland or X11

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

Output will be wayland or x11. On a hybrid session (XWayland) running an X11 app, this still reports wayland.

Verification

After taking a screenshot with any method, confirm the file exists and is a valid image:

ls -lh ~/Pictures/Screenshots/
file ~/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot_from_*.png

Expected output will show a PNG file with a size above a few kilobytes and file reporting PNG image data, NNNN x NNNN. A zero-byte file means the capture failed silently — check the troubleshooting section below.

Troubleshooting

Flameshot produces a black or blank screenshot on Wayland

This almost always means Flameshot is using the X11 capture path via XWayland instead of the portal. Set the environment variable to force portal use before launching:

WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 flameshot gui

If that doesn't resolve it, ensure you have xdg-desktop-portal and the appropriate backend installed (xdg-desktop-portal-gnome or xdg-desktop-portal-kde), then log out and back in.

sudo apt install xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-gnome   # GNOME/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-gnome   # Fedora

Print Screen does nothing in GNOME

GNOME Shell may have crashed or the keybinding may have been overridden by another app. Restart the shell (X11 only: Alt+F2, type r, press Enter) or log out and back in. Verify the binding is still set under Settings → Keyboard.

grimshot / grim not found

These tools are wlroots-specific. They work on Sway, Hyprland, and other wlroots-based compositors. They will not work on GNOME Wayland or KDE Wayland. Use the GNOME built-in shortcuts or Spectacle respectively.

Screenshots are saved at the wrong scale on HiDPI displays

grim captures at native pixel density. Pass -s 1 to scale the output to logical resolution:

grim -s 1 ~/Pictures/logical-size.png