Waytator 1.5.1

What's Changed

New

• Updates take effect while Waytator is running. After an update, the next launch runs the new version instead of the one already running, wherever Waytator is installed. A background service (--gapplication-service) comes back as the new version's.
• Out-of-date banner. A window that is still open, or a capture or recording still under way, keeps going on the old version and shows This version of Waytator is out of date with Restart, which reopens what the window shows in the new version and asks first if there's unsaved work.

This works from 1.5.1 on. If 1.5.0 is running when you update, quit it once.

Fixes

• H.264 exports through VA-API no longer get stuck at 0% on some videos with Mesa's radeonsi, by turning off B-frames until the Mesa bug is fixed.
• --help and the README say that --notify saves and copies as set in Preferences, rather than always.

Full Changelog: v1.5.0...v1.5.1

Waytator 1.5.0

What's Changed

New

• Screen recording. Record an area, a screen or a window, with system sound and the microphone. A small bar shows the time and stops it. Start from the record button, the start page or waytator --record.
• Video editor. Open a recording or any video to crop, trim, split, join, rotate, flip, mute, change gain, pitch and speed, then export to H.264, HEVC, AV1, VP9 or GIF.
• Skip the editor. Screenshots and recordings can be saved and copied without opening the editor, set in Preferences.
• Countdown before a delayed screenshot.
• Record button in the top bar, next to Screenshot.
• Screenshot instead of Capture across the app, with separate Screenshots and Recordings pages in Preferences. Adds --screenshot-area-shortcut and --screenshot-screen-shortcut; the --capture-* flags still work.

Removed

• The window's own delay. Set a delay in the capture overlay or with --delay.

Fixes

• A capture already on screen is left alone when another is asked for.
• The copy button that did the copy gets the tick.

Full Changelog: v1.4.0...v1.5.0

Waytator 1.4.0

What's Changed

New

• Pixel-exact area selection. The capture overlay now has a magnifier, and holding Shift slows the pointer down for fine adjustments. The slowdown speed can be set in the preferences.
• A smaller, movable capture bar. It's trimmed down to icons, can be dragged anywhere, and the Area/Screen highlight slides across when you switch.
• Works at any window size. The floating controls fit any window, down to phone width, and the tools stay in the bottom dock at every height.
• Better zoom. Zooming centers on the pointer wherever it is, the tool preview stays under the pointer while you zoom and pan, and Fit behaves reliably.
• Crop is now Transform.
• Faster startup. The capture overlay and the editor appear noticeably sooner.
• --gapplication-service support, for D-Bus activation. Thanks @LuckShiba (#28).

Fixes

• Clicks pass through the empty space around the bottom controls.
• Keyboard zoom no longer drifts, and clashing shortcuts are flagged.

Full Changelog: v1.3.2...v1.4.0

Waytator 1.3.2

What's Changed

New

• Waytator can now be installed with Nix straight from this repo, without waiting for nixpkgs to catch up. nix run github:faetalize/waytator/stable gets the latest release and nix run github:faetalize/waytator follows master. On NixOS, add the repo as a flake input; the README has a snippet.

Full Changelog: v1.3.1...v1.3.2

Waytator 1.3.1

What's Changed

Fixes

• With a transparent window background, the desktop behind the whole window is blurred again on compositors that blur windows, such as niri. Since GTK 4.24, turning on "Blur the background of controls" had limited the compositor's blur to just the floating controls.

Full Changelog: v1.3.0...v1.3.1

Waytator 1.3.0

What's Changed

Built-in screenshot capture (#24)

• waytator --screenshot freezes the screen so you can capture an area or a whole screen. It works on wlroots compositors and niri, uses GNOME's own screenshot UI on GNOME, and falls back to the screenshot portal everywhere else.
• You can also capture with the camera button next to Open, the Capture entry on the home screen, two assignable shortcuts, or the Capture Area / Capture Screen desktop actions.
• Delayed captures: --delay SECONDS (up to 300), Delay in the capture overlay, or the Delay menu in the app (1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds).
• waytator --screenshot --notify skips the editor and sends a notification with Open and Edit actions.
• New Screenshots page in Preferences:
  • Save folder: saves every capture as it is taken (default ~/Pictures/Screenshots).
  • Copy to clipboard: copies every capture as it is taken.
  • Hide waytator: keeps waytator out of captures. On by default.
• If the portal turns a screenshot down for lack of permission, waytator offers to allow it and retakes the screenshot.
• Each new image or capture opens in its own window.
• The home screen is now Capture, Delay, Record (coming soon) and Open image.
• Saving and copying PNGs is much faster: a 2538×1360 capture encodes in about 80 ms instead of 1150 ms.
• Startup is much faster with large icon themes because waytator now always uses Adwaita icons.

Tool, size and color shortcuts (#22)

• Every tool has a key, shown on its button: Pan P, Crop C, Brush B, Highlighter H, Eraser E, Rectangle R, Circle O, Line L, Arrow A, Recognize text G, Text T, Blur U.
• Number keys pick a stroke color from a palette you can edit in Preferences (up to nine colors).
• All of these keys can be reassigned on a new Shortcuts page in Preferences.
• Size presets: thin, medium and thick buttons replace the slider. The slider now sits in a drawer you open with the chevron. Drag the size readout to scrub, or click it to type a size. [ and ] step through the sizes.
• Fixed the size slider not following a typed size.

Dependencies

• Build: gtk4-layer-shell, wayland, wayland-protocols.
• Runtime: adwaita-icon-theme (most distros install it with gtk4), plus wl-clipboard as before.

Known limitations

• Recording is not implemented yet.
• Starting a capture while one is already open stacks a second one (#25).
• --screen doesn't work on GNOME, and on GNOME the Save folder and Copy to clipboard settings don't apply because GNOME saves and copies the screenshot itself.

Verification

• Built successfully with meson compile -C build-dev.

Full Changelog: v1.2.5...v1.3.0

Waytator 1.2.5

What's Changed

• Added close on copy: the image is handed to wl-copy so it survives the window closing. wl-clipboard is now a required runtime dependency.
• Added save, save and close, and save, copy and close actions.
• Shortcuts are now assignable in preferences: close window, copy, copy without closing, save (defaults to Ctrl+S), save and close, and save, copy and close. Each can be overridden per launch with a --*-shortcut flag.
• Shortcut flags and the settings file accept ctrl+shift+s style syntax, case insensitively, alongside GTK accelerator syntax.
• Saving an image that has no file yet opens the save dialog instead of doing nothing.
• Fixed OCR overlay misalignment after zooming (#13).
• Fixed floating controls losing their background in comma-decimal locales such as de_DE (#18).

Verification

• Built successfully with meson compile -C build-dev.

Full Changelog: v1.2.4...v1.2.5

Waytator 1.2.4

What's Changed

• Improved blur rendering performance by drawing strokes directly during normal canvas redraws instead of recompositing the full image on every frame.
• Blur strokes are now merged into the base image when applied, keeping subsequent redraws fast.
• Added an apply-blur confirmation warning because committed blur can no longer be erased like a normal stroke; use Undo to revert it.
• Avoided creating undo/autocopy history entries for eraser drags that do not remove anything.

Verification

• Built successfully with meson compile -C build-dev.

Full Changelog: v1.2.3...v1.2.4

Waytator 1.2.3

What's Changed

• Standardized popover placement so top controls open toward the canvas and bottom controls open upward, with popover arrows disabled.
• Added niri screenshot clipboard support: pressing Ctrl+C in niri's interactive screenshot UI opens the clipboard image directly in Waytator.
• Added --name NAME for stdin images and timestamped clipboard capture names in the niri helper script.
• Fixed text tool placement so each text entry anchors at the newly selected location and cancelled empty text entries are discarded.

Verification

• Built successfully with meson compile -C build-dev.

Full Changelog: v1.2.2...v1.2.3

Release 1.2.2

Changelog

• Remove touch tap debug logs
• Implement touch tap gesture handling
• Add zoom gesture handling for canvas interactions with touch devices
• Add functionality to open containing folder or parent folder for current file
• Add file actions popover to filename button
• Add precise size popup for drawing tools
• Rename color dialog variables for clarity in preferences window