Screenshot & Screen Recording

Overview

Capture screenshots and screen recordings from the terminal.

Screenshots

Linux

# Full screen (scrot)
scrot /tmp/screenshot.png

# Active window
scrot -u /tmp/window.png

# Selection (click and drag)
scrot -s /tmp/selection.png

# Delayed (5 seconds)
scrot -d 5 /tmp/delayed.png

# Using gnome-screenshot
gnome-screenshot -f /tmp/screenshot.png
gnome-screenshot -a -f /tmp/area.png   # area selection

# Using import (ImageMagick)
import /tmp/screenshot.png             # click to select window
import -window root /tmp/fullscreen.png

macOS

# Full screen
screencapture /tmp/screenshot.png

# Selection
screencapture -i /tmp/selection.png

# Window (click to select)
screencapture -iW /tmp/window.png

# Delayed (5 seconds)
screencapture -T 5 /tmp/delayed.png

# No shadow
screencapture -io /tmp/noshadow.png

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

# Use PowerShell from WSL
powershell.exe -c "Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms; [System.Windows.Forms.Screen]::PrimaryScreen | ForEach-Object { \$bitmap = New-Object System.Drawing.Bitmap(\$_.Bounds.Width, \$_.Bounds.Height); \$graphics = [System.Drawing.Graphics]::FromImage(\$bitmap); \$graphics.CopyFromScreen(\$_.Bounds.Location, [System.Drawing.Point]::Empty, \$_.Bounds.Size); \$bitmap.Save('C:\\tmp\\screenshot.png') }"
cp /mnt/c/tmp/screenshot.png /tmp/screenshot.png

Screen Recording

Linux (ffmpeg)

# Record screen (X11)
ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 30 -s 1920x1080 -i :0.0 -c:v libx264 -preset fast /tmp/recording.mp4

# Record with audio
ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 30 -s 1920x1080 -i :0.0 -f pulse -i default -c:v libx264 -c:a aac /tmp/recording.mp4

# Stop with Ctrl+C

macOS

# Start recording
screencapture -v /tmp/recording.mp4
# Stop with Ctrl+C or Escape

Tips

• Use PNG for screenshots (lossless)
• Use MP4/WebM for recordings
• For OCR on screenshots: tesseract screenshot.png - --oem 3 (requires tesseract)
• Resize: convert screenshot.png -resize 50% thumbnail.png
• Annotate: convert screenshot.png -pointsize 24 -annotate +10+30 "Text" annotated.png