xnap

xnap is a minimal screenshot utility for X11.

It captures screen contents and writes a raw PPM (P6) image to standard output. xnap does not save files by itself and does not perform image conversion.

Building and installing

make sudo make install

Dependencies

• Xlib (required)
• Xinerama (optional, for multi-monitor support)

Usage

xnap always writes image data to stdout. Redirect the output to a file or pipe it to another program for conversion or storage.

Examples:

Select a region and save as PPM

xnap > image.ppm

Capture the full screen

xnap -f > fullscreen.ppm

Capture screen 0 (Xinerama)

xnap -s 0 > screen0.ppm

Convert to PNG using ImageMagick

xnap | convert ppm:- image.png

Example key binding

Using sxwm:

bind : mod + shift + s : "bash -c 'xnap | pnmtopng | tee ~/Pictures/screenshots/$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M).png | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png'"

Philosophy

xnap follows the Unix philosophy:

• do one thing
• do it simply
• leave storage and conversion to other tools

Enjoy!