Haha an important detail! Looks like they're trying to make an easily installable version for Mac. I see commits in the log about MacOS as well as a note that mentions building it yourself:
> There are no macOS port of flameshot now that can be easy installed. But you can build flameshot by yourself and use it.
The screenshot tool in macOS can take full screen, region or window screenshots. It can also capture video.
This is all I need from the screenshot tool itself and I am glad that they don’t add a bunch of additional options and stuff inside of screenshot taking itself.
If you want to annotate the screenshot open it in Preview and edit it there.
If you need really powerful editing tools, a third-party tool is appropriate.
It’s better that way to me. Have a system that works nicely for everyone, and leave it to third-party developers to build niche tools.
Imagine how much useless to me stuff there would be on my screen, if the operating system had to ship with tools that did absolutely everything for absolutely everyone.
You mean the one that's so laggy, there's often a 2 second delay between pressing the hotkey and the screenshot happening? And if you're low on RAM, it'll freeze the whole computer for 15 seconds and not even take the screenshot (potentially crashing Chrome in the process)? Yeah, I love that one! It also seems to hijack the Print Screen key, making it subject to its own instability.
In this project's case, it showcases a lot of features as they're actually used, rather than some bullets that say what it _should_ do. In general, I appreciate a gif like this for explaining because it boils down some essential features into one easily digestable clip. It's a preferable medium for me over a long YouTube video or text explaining how something works.
not OP but I think they meant all over this tool (Flameshot).
Like OP, I’m also a HUGE fan of cleanshot x for mac. Got our entire team on it, some were quite happy with the built-in screen grabbing tool on Mac, but pretty much all love Cleanshot.
- uploads text from your clipboard to pastebins and images to your image hoster
- ftp upload (copying the http path to what you uploaded, full control over file naming ect). I built something to upload markdown via ftp and copy a url with the filename as an argument to the clipboard. That url leads to a js renderer for markdown.
- doing mp4 videos
Only downsides: a bit complex in the settings, wants to update often.
- numbering tool to quickly ad step 1, 2,3 to screenshots.
It also lets you do really interesting things like set up a time lapse so that it'll take screenshots every interval and be able to make animated GIF files.
By my count, mp4 video and FTP are the only things you mentioned that Flameshot doesn't do.
I don't know how common my case is, but my video capture needs quickly rise to needing OBS or equivalent. I don't think a "desktop utility" meets the need. For casual image captures, Flameshot more than satisfies.
Last time I had to use FTP, it was because a client faced ridiculous security policies on incoming email and web, but was for some reason allowed to host FTP service.
- blur for privacy: bad default in flameshot, I usually blur twice with it. If you are not careful text on the edge of your blur at least will remain very readable.
- I still like putting mouse pointer image and number markers quickly
- all the text upload stuff
- I like annotating first, and only than picking the area to shoot.
- highlighting does not multiply colors making highlighted passages less readable (looks foggy).
I've used ShareX for years, really powerful and also a config hell bloated mess. Settings I know are in there, I'll got hunting for 15 minutes to find where they are buried.
It's classic case if feature creep and UI designed by engineers.
But I've not found an alternative so far for Windows
I was using Greenshot because of the default configuration. But left for ShareX because of the Mp4 videos and Gifs. You're correct about the settings. But that's what I love about it too. I was able to mimic GS's default behavior in ShareX.
Great tool! But be careful though. In the default config there is a button next to the save local button which uploads your image as a public image to imgur without asking for confirmation.
Fortunately you can remove the button via the settings menu though I do think it is a rather dangerous button to have there by default.
I personally have bound my print screen button to “flameshot gui” - it presents an excellent dialog window of what you actually want to do with the screenshot, and offers to annotate it etc.
90% of the time copying it to the clipboard is good enough, but sometimes the option to upload as a public image is nice.
Thanks for the notice, I was taken away by how great the tool was working and making my workflow far easier when helping people with various kinds of IT problems. Uploading a screenshot of something that might contain sensitive information is not something I want to have happen by accident!
Flameshot is really good (I use it myself on Linux) but there are a couple features I miss from other tools. This probably suggests that I request these on their github :-)
- there doesn't seem to be an option that asks me to prompt for a file name and location if I want to save the screenshot at the time I have taken it. It will use a preselected location and an auto-generated name instead (and/or save to clipboard).
- if I want to annotate the image, it is done on the area of the screen the image was originally captured in. The method I prefer and used in other programs is to put the capture into a new window that you can move around and then edit within.
Will check Flameshot, if is good enough to match my experience with ShareX I will consider make the switch.
I prefer use tools that are available on Linux to increase the visibility of Linux! I believe that if we make more popular (by using and recommending) tools that are available in Windows/Mac _and_ Linux, more people will have no issues to switch to Linux (eg: VLC, Inkscape, Gimp, Krita, LibreOffice, Kdenlive).
I have Ubuntu as a secondary OS because sadly I'm hostage of Adobe CS :(
I think that an UX improvement for most users of the download page will be have the direct link to download the latest installer (.msi) instead of link to the latest release page on GitHub with all the binaries, witch can be confusing (besides that now is not even in the latest release). And put the link of latest release page on GitHub as a secondary link.
I've sampled many screenshot tools over the years and it seems like everyone has their opinions. This looks like an improved version of Lightshot which is one of my favorites, but had a few limitations.
My current (windows only) favorite is Screenshot Captor [1] which definitely has a power user bent, but I really like the ability to always both copy the screenshot to clipboard as well as save the screenshot for later use. There's a lot of power built into the annotation/editing tools and a million and one ways to configure/custom process stuff afterwards.
Readit News
If I were more of a hacker and hadn't already paid the best 25 bucks I've ever spent on CleanShot X [0] I'd be all over this.
[0]: https://cleanshot.com/
> There are no macOS port of flameshot now that can be easy installed. But you can build flameshot by yourself and use it.
This is all I need from the screenshot tool itself and I am glad that they don’t add a bunch of additional options and stuff inside of screenshot taking itself.
If you want to annotate the screenshot open it in Preview and edit it there.
If you need really powerful editing tools, a third-party tool is appropriate.
It’s better that way to me. Have a system that works nicely for everyone, and leave it to third-party developers to build niche tools.
Imagine how much useless to me stuff there would be on my screen, if the operating system had to ship with tools that did absolutely everything for absolutely everyone.
Deleted Comment
In this project's case, it showcases a lot of features as they're actually used, rather than some bullets that say what it _should_ do. In general, I appreciate a gif like this for explaining because it boils down some essential features into one easily digestable clip. It's a preferable medium for me over a long YouTube video or text explaining how something works.
Like OP, I’m also a HUGE fan of cleanshot x for mac. Got our entire team on it, some were quite happy with the built-in screen grabbing tool on Mac, but pretty much all love Cleanshot.
https://getsharex.com/
A few things it does:
https://i.imgur.com/FMMrVml.png
- uploads text from your clipboard to pastebins and images to your image hoster
- ftp upload (copying the http path to what you uploaded, full control over file naming ect). I built something to upload markdown via ftp and copy a url with the filename as an argument to the clipboard. That url leads to a js renderer for markdown.
- doing mp4 videos
Only downsides: a bit complex in the settings, wants to update often.
- numbering tool to quickly ad step 1, 2,3 to screenshots.
I don't know how common my case is, but my video capture needs quickly rise to needing OBS or equivalent. I don't think a "desktop utility" meets the need. For casual image captures, Flameshot more than satisfies.
Last time I had to use FTP, it was because a client faced ridiculous security policies on incoming email and web, but was for some reason allowed to host FTP service.
- blur for privacy: bad default in flameshot, I usually blur twice with it. If you are not careful text on the edge of your blur at least will remain very readable.
- I still like putting mouse pointer image and number markers quickly
- all the text upload stuff
- I like annotating first, and only than picking the area to shoot.
- highlighting does not multiply colors making highlighted passages less readable (looks foggy).
It's classic case if feature creep and UI designed by engineers.
But I've not found an alternative so far for Windows
Fortunately you can remove the button via the settings menu though I do think it is a rather dangerous button to have there by default.
90% of the time copying it to the clipboard is good enough, but sometimes the option to upload as a public image is nice.
Dead Comment
- there doesn't seem to be an option that asks me to prompt for a file name and location if I want to save the screenshot at the time I have taken it. It will use a preselected location and an auto-generated name instead (and/or save to clipboard).
- if I want to annotate the image, it is done on the area of the screen the image was originally captured in. The method I prefer and used in other programs is to put the capture into a new window that you can move around and then edit within.
I'm on Windows and I use https://getsharex.com/ which is open source too but only for Windows https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX
Will check Flameshot, if is good enough to match my experience with ShareX I will consider make the switch.
I prefer use tools that are available on Linux to increase the visibility of Linux! I believe that if we make more popular (by using and recommending) tools that are available in Windows/Mac _and_ Linux, more people will have no issues to switch to Linux (eg: VLC, Inkscape, Gimp, Krita, LibreOffice, Kdenlive).
I have Ubuntu as a secondary OS because sadly I'm hostage of Adobe CS :(
Will spread the word!
Now looking for the Windows installer on the download page https://flameshot.org/download/ to install it on my PC, I see that is not very handy, the download page links to the latest release page on GitHub who don't have the Windows installer yet https://github.com/flameshot-org/flameshot/releases/tag/v0.8...
The previous version have it! https://github.com/flameshot-org/flameshot/releases/tag/v0.8...
I think that an UX improvement for most users of the download page will be have the direct link to download the latest installer (.msi) instead of link to the latest release page on GitHub with all the binaries, witch can be confusing (besides that now is not even in the latest release). And put the link of latest release page on GitHub as a secondary link.
Deleted Comment
My current (windows only) favorite is Screenshot Captor [1] which definitely has a power user bent, but I really like the ability to always both copy the screenshot to clipboard as well as save the screenshot for later use. There's a lot of power built into the annotation/editing tools and a million and one ways to configure/custom process stuff afterwards.
[1]https://www.donationcoder.com/software/mouser/popular-apps/s...