FAQ & Help

  1. I want Shutter to be the default tool to take screenshots with. How do I do that?
    Shutter provides a built-in functionality to setup the global shortcuts if you are using GNOME. A detailed description and solutions for other desktop environments are avaiable here.
  2. I want to open my screenshot in an external application but the ‘Open with’ menu entry is empty. Why are my installed apps not listed here?
    You don’t seem to have any mimeinfo.cache files. Try running the update-desktop-database command. If you  don’t have this command you should install the desktop-file-utils package.
  3. Are there any plans to develop Shutter for Window, Mac OS or any other platform that is not GNU/Linux (or related)?
    I totally agree that supporting as many platforms as possible should be a target for most software projects nowadays, but there are some good – in my opinion – reasons against this in some special cases.
    One of the most important things is that Shutter depends on software components that are only available on Linux and comparable platforms (e.g. some gnome libraries and especially a fully working X-Server). Shutter is using xlib calls in many cases to perform the various tasks of taking screenshots. Most parts of the application had to be rewritten when multi-platform would be a future goal. Currently this project is a two men project and it is just impossible to “implement new features and improving the app” AND “spending months in writing several backends to support more platforms”.
    Another reason that comes to my mind is that there are already a lot screenshot taking applications for windows (freeware and professional software). I am unsure if the huge amount of work would be worth it. The fact that there was no dedicated screenshot application for Linux was one of the main reasons for starting Shutter and I am still convinced that it is useful for a lot of people who need some more features than offered by standard tools.

    Nevertheless, this is an open-source project and anyone could start a port of Shutter at any time…to any platforms possible. I am always willing to assist where I can.

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134 Comments

  1. Gorgonz
    November 23, 2011

    i love this tool, since opensuse 11.4 🙂 Now i went to opensuse 21.1 (64bit), where it is already part of the suse repository. But it doesn’t work anymore. In order to analyse the problem i started shutter from konsole to see the messages. Can Someone interpret these ones?:

    Can’t locate Sort/Naturally.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/share/shutter/resources/modules /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.14.2/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.14.2 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.14.2/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.14.2 /usr/lib/perl5/5.14.2/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.14.2 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl .) at /usr/bin/shutter line 123.

    Looks like some dependency probplem, but the perl stuff is available and even a perl-32 addition couldnot help.

    Any ideas?

    reply
  2. Aaron
    November 8, 2011

    Is it possible to assign a mouse shortcut for taking screenshots and what would the command be?

    reply
    • Romario
      November 8, 2011

      A mouse shortcut? What exactly do you mean?

      reply
      • Aaron
        November 9, 2011

        I have some additional buttons on my mouse which id like to set the screenshot command to. In compiz this is possible. i didnt find a way to do that in shutter though.
        basically i want it to take a screenshot when i press the button on my mouse.

        reply
        • Romario
          November 13, 2011

          Hm, no Shutter does not support that. Isn’t it possible to configure a custom mouse shortcut within compiz, e.g. to trigger a custom command like shutter -a (see ‘man shutter’ for more examples)?

          reply
  3. Carlos Botero
    October 19, 2011

    I love this tool, I was using A LOT when I was in my Ubuntu.

    I just got a new Macbook and man, how much I miss Linux Shutter! (there is a “Mac Shutter” but not comparable at all!)

    I was looking if there was plans for a port to Mac and your answer makes total sense, if I knew how to do this porting I would help, but unfortunately I’m not in that technical level.

    Then… if not a port to Mac (or Windows) what do you think about a Chrome/Chromium extension… ? There are some out there, but still nothing comparable with Shutter!

    Just some thoughts about it, cheers!

    reply
  4. Joe
    July 15, 2011

    What an AMAZING program. WELL DONE!

    reply
  5. Wolfgang
    March 12, 2011

    Thank you very much! 🙂

    reply
  6. Wolfgang
    March 10, 2011

    I like shutter very much, and it used to work well – until a few days ago. I am not quite sure whet I changed on my box but now shutter complains about a missing file called \sel_window_list.svg\ when starting. After I confirmed the error message, it continues to load. Any idea what could have gone wrong? I already reinstalled the program, but the error stays. I am using shutter 0.87. Thanks very much in advance for any help.

    reply
  7. John
    December 30, 2010

    Hi,
    just a question: do the developers think also for an opportunity to add his own account for online based picture HOSTs?
    For example: ubuntu-pics.de is not for free anymore but I have an account there.
    However you’re not able to edit those HOSTS in the preferences section. You have only those two accounts which are provided and fixed by Shutter itself.
    So it would be great to get the opportunity by adding his own sharing account under preferences.

    Kind Regards

    reply
    • Romario
      December 30, 2010

      No, this is not possible because every hoster has a custom API that has to be used. We need to implement that for every single hoster.

      reply
  8. BlueLight
    December 26, 2010

    I am getting this error “An error occurred while creating a message compose window. Please try again.” when using the email function on Debian Testing with Thunderbird 3.1.7. Any idea how to fix this? Any help appreciated.

    reply
    • Romario
      December 30, 2010

      What version of Shutter are you using?

      reply
      • BlueLight
        December 30, 2010

        Shutter v0.85.1
        Rev.725

        reply
        • Romario
          December 30, 2010

          Please update Shutter. You have to download the latest tarball because there are no up-to-date debian packages available yet (the ubuntu packages do not work). You do not need to compile anything. Download the tarball, extract it and launch bin/shutter via terminal. Let me know if you need any further help.

          reply
  9. LM
    November 18, 2010

    What about building it in Cygwin? That way all the X infrastructure is supported and it will still run on Windows. Also, there’s XMing if you want a standalone X Windows server.

    reply
    • Romario
      November 24, 2010

      I don’t know cygwin very good but I still have some worries about the X server. As far as I understand Shutter would only be able to capture x-clients. Hence, you would not be able to capture any native window. Does this make sense? This was my experience when building Shutter for macosx.

      reply
  10. Romario
    July 1, 2010

    @Badcam
    This is not possible and not planned currently – maybe when I have more time during semester break.

    reply
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