snapclip is a minimal region-screenshot tool for Linux that does not flash the screen when you take a screenshot. Drag a see-through box over anything, press Enter to copy it straight to the clipboard (or S to also save a PNG), and the window closes. No flash, no shutter animation, no leftover files, and the selection border is never in the shot.
Built for Ubuntu / GNOME / Wayland, where the usual screenshot tools either don't work or trigger GNOME's annoying screen-flash effect.
If you searched for "how to take a screenshot without the screen flashing on Linux", "disable GNOME screenshot flash", or "Wayland screenshot no flash animation" — here's what's going on:
On GNOME (Mutter) under Wayland, the screenshot is taken by GNOME Shell
itself, through the org.gnome.Shell.Screenshot D-Bus interface or the XDG
desktop Screenshot portal. Every time that path captures the screen, GNOME
Shell plays a white shutter-flash animation. There is no setting to turn
the screenshot flash off — it's baked into the capture path that almost every
screenshot tool on GNOME Wayland uses (including the built-in PrintScreen UI and
portal-based tools like Flameshot on Wayland).
You also can't just switch tools: grim/slurp/scrot don't work on GNOME
(Mutter has no wlr-screencopy), and on modern GNOME org.gnome.Shell.Screenshot
returns AccessDenied to normal apps. So the only "supported" path is the portal
— and the portal flashes.
snapclip captures the screen a different way: it grabs a single frame from
Mutter's ScreenCast interface (org.gnome.Mutter.ScreenCast) over PipeWire,
the same screen-recording machinery used for screen sharing. Screen recording does
not play the shutter flash and shows no picker dialog — so the capture is
completely silent and invisible.
That's the whole trick: use screen-cast (recording), not screen-shot (the flashing path). snapclip grabs one frozen frame, lets you crop it, copies the crop to the clipboard, and exits — with no flash at any point.
Because no flash is the entire point, snapclip will never silently fall back to the flashing portal. If ScreenCast is unavailable it tells you what to install instead of flashing; you can pass
--allow-flashto deliberately use the portal anyway.
- ✅ No screen flash — ever (Mutter ScreenCast + PipeWire capture).
- ✅ Copy to clipboard as
image/png— paste into chat, a browser, GIMP, etc. - ✅ Copy never writes a file; Save writes a timestamped PNG only when you ask.
- ✅ See-through selection — thin border + handles, the interior shows the real screen.
- ✅ Move / resize / rubber-band a new box; double-click to grab the whole monitor.
- ✅ No capture flash, no toolbar clutter, no leftover temp files.
- ✅ Correct under fractional scaling and multi-monitor.
- ✅ Settings (border, dim, save folder, …) + a hotkey-friendly single command.
- ✅ Optional tools, all off by default so the toolbar stays just Copy / Save / Cancel: polygon & freehand selection (transparent outside the shape), a pen and a text tool (each with its own colour) that bake into the shot, and an "always save a copy" mode. Flip them on in ⚙ settings.
Tested on Ubuntu 26.04 / GNOME 50 / Wayland (should work on any GNOME-Wayland
with org.gnome.Mutter.ScreenCast).
sudo apt install python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-4.0 wl-clipboard \
gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0 \
gstreamer1.0-pipewire gstreamer1.0-plugins-base -y
git clone https://github.com/gitoffmylibrary/snapclip.git
cd snapclip
./install.sh # symlinks ~/.local/bin/snapclip + an apps-menu entry (no root)python3-gi-cairo is required (GTK's Cairo drawing fails without it); the
GStreamer packages provide the flash-free capture. You can also run it in place
without installing: python3 snapclip.py.
Run snapclip (after install.sh), from your apps menu, or via a hotkey.
| Action | Key | Button |
|---|---|---|
| Copy region to clipboard, then quit | Enter or Ctrl+C | Copy |
| Save timestamped PNG and copy, then quit | S | Save |
| Nudge the box by 1 px (Shift: resize by 1 px) | Arrow keys | — |
| Undo the last pen stroke / text | Ctrl+Z | — |
| Leave the active tool mode; then cancel | Esc | Cancel |
| Open settings | — | ⚙ |
- Move: drag inside the box (or arrow keys for 1 px steps).
- Resize: drag any edge or corner handle (or Shift+arrows for 1 px steps).
- New selection: drag on empty space to rubber-band a fresh box.
- Double-click: snap to the whole monitor; double-click again to restore.
- A live W×H readout (in real pixels) sits at the selection corner.
Enable any of these in ⚙ settings and a button for it appears on the toolbar (the default toolbar stays exactly Copy / Save / Cancel):
- Poly — click the corners of a polygon; double-click or Enter closes it. The copied/saved PNG is transparent outside the shape.
- Lasso — drag a freehand loop around anything; same transparent result.
- Once closed, a Poly/Lasso region moves and resizes exactly like the rectangle — drag inside it, grab its handles, or use the arrow keys. Dragging on empty space (or double-clicking) brings the rectangle back.
- Pen — draw strokes on the frozen shot in your configured colour/width; they're baked into the result at full resolution. Ctrl+Z undoes.
- Erase — appears automatically whenever Pen is enabled: click or drag over a stroke to remove it (Ctrl+Z brings it back). Erases pen strokes only.
- Text — click to type a label in your configured colour/size; Enter places it, Esc discards it. Placed labels stay editable: click one to select it (dashed grab box), drag it to move, Delete removes it — and Ctrl+Z undoes any of that.
The default colours ship as a WCAG set — selection border #0077CC, pen
#FFD60A, text #2D0A4E have pairwise contrast ratios ≥ 3:1, so the three
are distinguishable out of the box (and each is still fully customizable).
Copy puts the crop on the clipboard as image/png and never writes a file.
Save additionally writes ~/Pictures/Screenshots/snapclip-YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.png
(folder/format configurable).
GNOME → Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → +
- Name: snapclip
- Command:
snapclip(after./install.sh) — orpython3 /full/path/to/snapclip.py(only one overlay opens at a time — pressing the key again while it's open is a no-op) - Shortcut: e.g.
Super+Shift+SorCtrl+Alt+S
To put it on PrintScreen, first clear GNOME's built-in binding at
Settings → Keyboard → Screenshots. Avoid plain app combos like Ctrl+S.
Stored in ~/.config/snapclip/config.json:
The dialog is grouped into Selection, Output, and Tools; changes apply live and are written once when the dialog closes.
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Border colour | #0077CC |
Selection outline colour (WCAG-distinct from pen/text defaults) |
| Border width | 2 |
px |
| Outside dim | 0.35 |
Darkening outside the selection; interior is always see-through. 0 = none |
| Default size (× screen) | 0.4 |
Size of the fresh centered box (used when not remembering) |
| Remember last selection | off |
On: reopen with your previous box. Off: a fresh centered box each time |
| Save folder | ~/Pictures/Screenshots |
Click to edit in a popover, or Browse… |
| Filename format | snapclip-%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S.png |
strftime pattern; click to edit in a popover |
| Always save a copy | off |
On: plain Copy (Enter) also writes the timestamped PNG |
| Include mouse cursor | off |
Best-effort: composites a pointer glyph inside the selection |
| Polygon selection | off |
Adds the Poly toolbar button |
| Freehand selection | off |
Adds the Lasso toolbar button |
| Pen (+ colour, width) | off, #FFD60A, 3 |
Adds the Pen button — and Erase rides along automatically |
| Text (+ colour, size) | off, #2D0A4E, 18 |
Adds the Text toolbar button |
- Capture once, up front, flash-free. Before any window exists, snapclip
grabs one frame of the primary monitor via Mutter ScreenCast + PipeWire into a
Cairo surface (≈0.2 s, no flash, no file on disk). If ScreenCast is unavailable
it refuses to capture (rather than silently flashing) unless you pass
--allow-flash, which uses the portal and deletes its PNG dump. - Frozen full-screen overlay. That capture is shown frozen inside a single undecorated, full-screen GTK4 window. The selection rectangle is drawn as graphics inside that fixed surface — the window is never moved, which sidesteps Wayland's rule that an app may not set its own window position (the thing that breaks "draggable floating window" designs).
- Crop the pre-overlay capture. Confirm crops the cached image, so the border/dim/toolbar can never appear in the result and there is no second capture.
- Clipboard with no temp file. The crop is piped to
wl-copy --type image/pngover stdin;wl-copydaemonizes so the paste survives after snapclip exits. - Scaling. The crop scales the logical selection by
capture_px / logical_px, so it stays correct under fractional display scaling.
python3 test_snapclip.py # core pipeline suite (capture, crop,
# scaling, clipboard, save, config, geometry,
# no-flash policy)
python3 snapclip.py --self-test copy # exercise capture->crop->clipboard, no GUI
python3 snapclip.py --self-test save # ...and the save pathMouse-driven drag/resize can't be auto-tested (no input-injection tool works on GNOME Wayland), so the move/resize math is unit-tested directly and the overlay rendering is verified by screenshotting it.
Use a tool that captures via screen recording (PipeWire / ScreenCast) instead
of the GNOME screenshot path. snapclip does exactly this. The GNOME screenshot UI
and portal-based tools flash because GNOME Shell plays a shutter animation on every
shot, and there is no option to disable it.
No. GNOME does not expose a setting to turn off the screenshot flash — it's part of the Shell's capture path. The only way to avoid it is to capture a different way (which is what snapclip does).
grim/slurp rely on the wlr-screencopy protocol, which wlroots compositors
implement but GNOME's Mutter does not. scrot is X11-only. On GNOME Wayland the
supported capture paths are the GNOME Shell screenshot D-Bus interface (now
AccessDenied to normal apps), the XDG screenshot portal (which flashes), or — what
snapclip uses — Mutter ScreenCast over PipeWire (no flash).
Enter copies to the clipboard only (image/png) and writes nothing to disk.
S copies and saves a timestamped PNG to ~/Pictures/Screenshots. Esc
cancels with no capture and no clipboard change.
No. snapclip crops a frame captured before the overlay appears, so the border, dim, handles, and toolbar are never in the result.
Yes. It captures the monitor the overlay opens on and scales the crop by
capture_px / logical_px, so the result matches your selection at any scale.
- The overlay opens on the primary monitor (ScreenCast grabs exactly that monitor, so the crop is offset-correct at any scale).
- "Include cursor" is best-effort (the capture excludes the real pointer).
- Requires
org.gnome.Mutter.ScreenCast(GNOME Wayland). On stripped-down setups without it, pass--allow-flashto use the portal (which flashes).
MIT — see LICENSE.
Keywords: Linux screenshot without flash · GNOME screenshot no flash · disable screenshot flash Wayland · Wayland region screenshot to clipboard · screenshot tool no shutter animation · Ubuntu GNOME screenshot flash fix.