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Comment by muro | Hacker News Reader

Is there some software (macos) to regularly create screenshots throughout the day? Preferably if it merges it into a time-lapse.

I could probably create something with cron, but maybe a neater solution already exists.

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> Is there some software (macos) to regularly create screenshots throughout the day?

On macOS here's a little shell command to take a screenshot every 60 seconds and place it in the /tmp folder:

   while true; do
      screencapture /tmp/screen_capture_$(date +\%s).jpg ;
      echo "wrote screenshot";
      sleep 60;
   done

You can also include the name of the front most application by fetching it with AppleScript and then putting that in the filename. (Or you could put different app screenshots in different folders)

   while true; do
      FRONT_APP=$(osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to name of first application process whose frontmost is true');
      screencapture /tmp/screen_capture_${FRONT_APP}_$(date +\%s).jpg ;
      echo "wrote screenshot";
      sleep 60;
   done

Of course if you want this to run long term, use a cron job or even better, a launchd job. With launchd you get better coalescing and sleep recovery behavior. You can also add other fun trigger events. Like take a screenshot every time your `.zshrc` is modified [0]. Or a screenshot every time your internet access changes (by triggering on /etc/resolv.conf)

[0] Look up `WatchPaths` on my favorite launchd guide here: https://launchd.info/

Yes, I have ten years of screenshots (and webcam shots) at half hour intervals from having LifeSlice:

Source:https://github.com/wanderingstan/Lifeslice

Download page: http://wanderingstan.github.io/Lifeslice/

I developed it as an early Quantified Self tool primarily for the Webcam shots, but also have been saved on more than one occasion by having screenshots of work that would otherwise be lost.

Edit: the first version was just a shell script, which if you want a starting point to modify: https://github.com/wanderingstan/Lifeslice/blob/master/1.0-S...

I use cron; I think it's pretty neat:

/$INTERVAL * * * /usr/sbin/screencapture $CRONSHOTSDIR/`date +\%s`.png

and then to make the timelapse:

ffmpeg -r $FPS -pattern_type glob -i "*.png" -vcodec libx264 lapse-`date +%s`.mp4

You have to give screen capture permissions to cron.

I've been happily using Time Sink (https://manytricks.com/timesink/) to do this for about a year now. It does not automatically merge into a timelapse, but this is accomplished easily with ffmpeg.

Just remember to disable it before attempting extra curricular activities

I used to use chronolapse, a python program to take screenshots, including picture in picture with a webcam. It can use mencoder to create a video. I found I preferred using ffmpeg for my use case.

Something bash'ish

  while sleep 5
  do
    import -id root `date -Is`.png
  done

Then make a time lapse with mplayer et.al.

  $ which import
  import not found

How should I install that tool?

It's part of ImageMagick.

Got it, thanks!

import -window root `date -Is`.png

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