Fedora Workstation ships with a simple yet capable screenshot utility. It allows the user to take quick screenshots of your desktop, particular windows, or an arbitrary portion of the screen. The Screenshot utility (gnome-screenshot) application is designed to be a quick way to capture and save screenshots of your workstation.

Launching Screenshot

In Fedora Workstation, you launch Screenshot by searching for screenshot in the activities overview screen. You can also find it in the applications view. It is located in the Utilities subfolder.

Screenshot modes

Screenshot has three main modes of taking a screenshot: grab the whole screen, grab the current window, and select area to grab:

Note that if you are using multiple monitors, Grab the whole screen will take a screenshot of your whole screen, not just a specific monitor.

There are also a few extra options available for some of these modes.

Grab after delay allows you to specify how many seconds to wait before Screenshot takes the shot. It is useful for staging shots of things like items that appear on hover. Delaying the grab is only available on the grab the whole screen and grab the current window modes.

The grab the current window mode has the largest amount of options. It allows you to apply effects — such as a drop shadow — automatically after the screenshot is taken. When grabbing a window, you can also specify if you want the window borders and mouse pointer to show up in your screenshot too.

Taking screenshots

After setting the modes and options you require, press the Take Screenshot button in the top right of the Screenshot application window. Once you press the Take screenshot button the window will be hidden, so it won’t show in your screenshot.

If you are using the select area to grab mode, after you press the Take Screenshot button, your mouse pointer will change to a crosshair-style pointer. Simply click and drag to select the area for your screenshot.

Saving the screenshot

After the screenshot is taken, the Screenshot application will show a Save dialog. Screenshot will generate a name for you based on the time. Simply change the file name to one you want and click save. Screenshot also provides a neat button that will copy the screenshot to your clipboard. This is great if you want to quickly paste it into another application like GIMP or Inkscape for further editing.

Keyboard Shortcuts

If you want to just take a screenshot without playing with the settings beforehand, Fedora Workstation also has several keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots in different ways:

Printscreen key – grab a screenshot of the whole desktop and save it to your Pictures folder

key – grab a screenshot of the whole desktop and save it to your Pictures folder Alt + Printscreen – Take a screenshot of the currently focused window and save it to your Pictures folder

– Take a screenshot of the currently focused window and save it to your Pictures folder Shift + Printscreen – Select an area to grab and save it to your Pictures folder.

– Select an area to grab and save it to your Pictures folder. Ctrl + Printscreen – grab a screenshot of the whole desktop and copy it to the clipboard

– grab a screenshot of the whole desktop and copy it to the clipboard Ctrl + Alt + Printscreen – grab a screenshot of the currently focused window and copy it to the clipboard

– grab a screenshot of the currently focused window and copy it to the clipboard Ctrl + Shift + Printscreen – Select an area to grab and copy it to the clipboard

If you have a keyboard that doesn’t have a printscreen key, you can change these shortcuts in the Keyboard preferences in the Fedora Workstation settings application.