libshot

A simple, unified, Wayland/X11-agnostic screen capture library for Python on Linux.

libshot provides a straightforward API to take screenshots, automatically detecting your display server environment and using the appropriate backend without any configuration.

Features

• Unified API: The same code works for both Wayland and X11.
• Backend Auto-Detection: Automatically uses the correct backend (xdg-desktop-portal for Wayland, mss for X11).
• Simple to Use: Capture the full screen or a specific region with a single function call.
• Pillow Integration: Returns screenshots as Pillow Image objects for easy manipulation and saving.

Installation

Install the library directly from the source directory:

# Navigate to the libshot directory
cd /path/to/libshot

# Install using pip
pip install .

Dependencies

libshot relies on the following packages:

• mss: For the X11 backend.
• jeepney: For D-Bus communication on Wayland.
• Pillow: For image manipulation.

These dependencies are automatically installed when you install libshot.

Usage

Using libshot is simple. Just import the library and call the capture() function.

Capture the Full Screen

import libshot

try:
    # Capture the primary monitor
    image = libshot.capture()
    image.save("fullscreen.png")
    print("Screenshot saved to fullscreen.png")
except Exception as e:
    print(f"An error occurred: {e}")

Capture a Specific Region

import libshot

try:
    # Define a region (x, y, width, height)
    region = (100, 100, 500, 500)
    
    image = libshot.capture(region=region)
    image.save("region.png")
    print("Screenshot saved to region.png")
except Exception as e:
    print(f"An error occurred: {e}")

A Note on Wayland

Due to the security architecture of Wayland, applications cannot programmatically select a specific monitor or capture the screen without user interaction.

• When calling libshot.capture() on Wayland, the xdg-desktop-portal will handle the process.
• For full-screen captures, it will capture the entire desktop.
• For region captures (region=...), it will typically open an interactive selector for you to choose the area.
• The monitor parameter in the capture() function is ignored when running on Wayland.