Flameshot v11.0.0 | Hacker News Reader

Flameshot v11.0.0

github.com

114 pointsantouank30 comments

> Flameshot can now be run in "one off" mode which means the background systray component is now optional. See the CLI details below.

This was my main turn off from flameshot - I found it weird to have something running in the background all the time just for taking screenshots. I'll be giving it another go.

This is definitely a welcome feature. I continued using Screenshot despite getting drawn by Flameshot's nice additions.

I use flameshot and I don’t have anything running in the background. v0.9.0 on Debian with dwm. Works great.

Excellent piece of software, I use it so much it's now second nature. I remapped my prntscreen button on Ubuntu long long ago and have never even thought to search for a replacement.

I recently discovered Shottr [1] (Mac only), but very happy... like their innovative masking tool.

[1] https://shottr.cc/

Flameshot is fantastic. More distros should make it the default.

Gnome has their own screenshot tool and they also broke the workflow for Flameshot on Wayland recently. The internal API that was used to take screenshots was blocked, which is reasonable in and of itself, however the new public API has an animation, after which a special window opens and requires you to click a "share" button before Flameshot can work with the screenshot. You need to go through that every time you use Flameshot.

I like that they think of security, but this is the type of thing that forces people back to X11. Their own screenshot tool does not adhere to the same workflow, so maybe they are blind to the issue.

Considering that Gnome is now the default DE for the more popular distros, I doubt Flameshot will ever receive the honor of becoming the default screenshot tool, even though it should. It provides most of the capabilities that a user would need when taking a screenshot. Desktop Linux needs these little goodies, so it can be sold to the average user.

If you want to use a custom screen shot tool, you are not the target audience for gnome.

KDE has its own snapshot tool which is called Spectacle and is pretty solid.

Given the level of integration between KDE apps it's unlikely they will prefer an outside tool either.

How is Spectacle better integrated than Flameshot?

It has KDE's help, hotkeys, settings, etc...

Standardizing some tooling across major DEs would be a smart move, but I get the political impediments to doing so. Reinventing the wheel isn't always the right move. Flameshot's superior to either Gnome or KDE's defaults. (Another example - gnome-calculator is superior to kcalc, and there are probably better more obscure calendars out there too.)

> however the new public API has an animation, after which a special window opens and requires you to click a "share" button before Flameshot can work with the screenshot. You need to go through that every time you use Flameshot.

This is indeed very frustrating.

Something related is in the works for screenshares, a "remember this decision" option. https://feaneron.com/2021/11/13/adventures-with-portals/ At some point maybe something similar will come up for screenshots.

On a related note, GNOME Shell 42 should have a nice new screenshot integration: https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2021/12/twig-24/#gnome-shel...

> Their own screenshot tool does not adhere to the same workflow, so maybe they are blind to the issue.

Which isn't surprising, in the least. I agree with aidenn0, if you're using a custom screenshot tool, you're not using GNOME as it's intended to be used.

Here's another fun fact, their music player doesn't have a volume control and that's how they think end users should use it.

One of my favorite utilities on linux - I probably use it a dozen+ times a day, every day (have it bound to PrintScr). Took me a couple minutes this morning to remap my shortcuts though using the new gui mode.

I particularly like the "Drop Numbered Bubbles in incrementing value" option.

first new feature: >>> We are dropping "semver" and going forward will be using a major and minor version.

Yes!

I never really understood the sense of "semver" for applications

Flameshot is quite good, but to me it's always played second fiddle to Spectacle[0]. Flameshot's purple bubble UI and strange UX workflow makes it a hard pick when native choices are just this good.

[0] https://github.com/KDE/spectacle

Unfortunately, spectacle doesn't work on Sway, at least it didn't the last time I tried it a few months ago.

Somewhat related / complementary - Capture2Text is a great Windows OCR screenshot tool, i.e. for capturing graphical text and converting it to textual text:

http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/

No affiliation with the project, just a tool I really like.

I use this similar app for MacOS and it works wonders: https://textsniper.app/

Also not affiliate with the project, but it does work really well

I was searching for something like Capture2text, which I use often on my windows machine, when I got macbook. None of the free apps made it past my requirements and I was unwilling to pay. I already had BetterTouchTools, so I created a global gesture for 2 finger double-tap that runs my OCR-translate Shortcut (the Apple app called Shortcuts). There the shortcut consists of: Take interactive screenshot -> Extract text from screen -> Translate text from image from detected language to English -> Show translated text.

Now my only 2 gripes are: the gesture sometimes doesn't trigger (for example when right click menu is open), and second: (resolved in edit) the OCR is keeping line breaks but the translation translates each line independently (still shows all lines at the same time). Maybe its fixable somehow, didn't bother yet.

EDIT: Just looked into it and putting a "Split text by lines" and "Combine text with spaces" nodes between "Extract text from screen" and "Translate text from image" works great with getting rid of line breaks. There's also replace text with regex support for wizards. If anyone knows how to say in regex "delete single newline characters, but if there's two, keep both of them", that would be nice.

The built-in OCR of macOS truely is the best one I have ever used. Works in Safari and Preview.

IMO ksnip[1] brings an amazing experience to the user as well, and I highly recommend it.

[1] https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip/

This tool has way too many features.

Is Flameshot better than Greenshot or ShareX?

They all do the same thing. Flameshot has the cleanest interface IMO.

Not entirely true; ShareX has many more features than Flameshot, including video capture and custom uploaders.

Love sharex. The gif feature, region capture, image editor etc makes life a breeze.

Those don't run on Linux, but they're basically the same.

On Windows, Flameshot's installer is 40+ Mb, while Greenshot is 1.8 Mb. ShareX's installer started small, but has grown steadily up tp 7 Mb. I know installer size is not equivalent to performance, but on limited machines I stick to Greenshot, which works well for my use cases.

use it often, one of my must-have linux utilties.

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