scrot is a minimalist

command line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

screen capturing application. It allows substantial degree of flexibility by specifying parameters on command line, including the ability to invoke a third-party utility to manipulate the resulting

screenshot screenshot (also known as screen capture or screen grab) is a digital image that shows the contents of a computer display. A screenshot is created by the operating system or software running on the device powering the display. Additionally, s ...

Description

Features of the program include the ability to limit the scope of capturing to a specific screen area, to set the delay (if needed to capture some menu or another UI element which is shown only when focused) and to specify the filename template using wildcards (including those of the strftime function from the C standard library). Other features include creating

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image ...

s of the taken screenshots and specifying the quality of the resulting image if

lossy In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

format is required. The scrot utility follows the

UNIX philosophy The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix de ...

principles formulated by

Doug McIlroy Malcolm Douglas McIlroy (born 1932) is a mathematician, engineer, and programmer. As of 2019 he is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College. McIlroy is best known for having originally proposed Unix pipelines and developed s ...

: the only thing it does is screen capturing, though it allows one to specify a command for further manipulations of a resulting file. The ability to control scrot from the command line allows the user to run it over the network with tools like

OpenSSH OpenSSH (also known as OpenBSD Secure Shell) is a suite of secure networking utilities based on the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, which provides a secure channel over an unsecured network in a client–server architecture. Network Working Gro ...

to get a

of a remote desktop or execute it as the

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction ...

command binding. In February 2019, scrot was forked as part of the Resurrecting Open Source Project. This updated fork is being used for the

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a Rolling release, rolling-release model. The default installation is a minim ...

package of scrot.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , url = http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/how_to_take_screenshots_with_scrot , title = How to take screenshots with Scrot , first = Gary , last = Richmond , work =

Free Software Magazine ''Free Software Magazine'' (also known as ''FSM'' and originally titled ''The Open Voice'') is a Web site that produces a (generally bi-monthly) mostly free-content online magazine about free software. It was started in November 2004 by Australi ...

, date = 2007-09-04 , access-date = 2011-12-17 {{cite web , url = http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/vivid/man1/scrot.1.html , title = scrot - capture a screenshot using imlib2 , first = Tom , last = Gilbert , date = 2000-10-26 , work = Ubuntu Manpage , access-date = 2015-10-02 {{cite web , url = http://www.itnewb.com/v/Using-Scrot-the-Screen-Shot-Command-Line-Utility-for-Linux , title = Using Scrot, the Screen Shot Command Line Utility for Linux , first = Kurt , last = Qian , work = ITNewb , date = 2009-07-06 , access-date = 2011-12-17 {{cite web , url = http://linuxandfriends.com/2008/10/25/take-screenshots-in-linux-with-scrot/ , title = Take screenshots in Linux with Scrot , work = Linux And Friends , date = 2008-10-25 , access-date = 2011-12-17 {{cite web , url = http://www.freetechie.com/blog/screenshots-with-scrot-a-command-line-tool-for-screenshots/ , title = screenshot with scrot – a command line tool for screenshots , first = Ben , last = Kevan , work = Free Techie , date = 2010-06-30 , access-date = 2011-12-17 {{cite journal , url = http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/80/Console_Screenshots_with_Scrot.pdf , format =

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, title = TYPE CHEESE , first = Karl , last = Deutsch , editor-first = Joe , editor-last = Casad , date=July 2007 , journal =

Linux Magazine ''Linux Magazine'' is an international magazine for Linux software enthusiasts and professionals. It is published by the former Linux New Media division of the German media company Medialinx AG. The magazine was first published in German in 199 ...

, issue = 80 , location =

Munich, Germany Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

, publisher = Linux New Media , access-date = 2011-12-17 , pages = 84, 85 *{{cite magazine , author=Karl Deutsch , date=July 2007 , title=Type Cheese: Screenshots from the console with Scrot , magazine=Linux Magazine , issue=80 , url=http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2007/80/TYPE-CHEESE {{cite web , url = http://www.alex.ballas.org/2010/11/09/scrot-and-team-viewer/ , title = Scrot and Team Viewer , first = Alex , last = Ballas , date = 2010-11-09 , access-date = 2011-12-17 {{cite web , url = https://github.com/resurrecting-open-source-projects/scrot/releases/tag/0.9 , title = Scrot 0.9, first release after the Resurrecting Open Source Project fork , date = 2019-02-12 Screenshot software Software using the BSD license Free graphics software

Description

See also

References