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If I want to share a screenshot, I currently need to either save the screenshot and then navigate to the file in order to send it or upload it to a image host/server.

Does anyone know how I can directly share screenshots from Ubuntu desktop? e.g. Directly from the screenshotting application to another app like for example Telegram or another instant messenger. So without having to find the file on disk in the open dialog or otherwise. A good example of this is in Android whereby if you take a screenshot, you can share it from the notification drawer to Telegram, etc.

Please note that sharing directly and uploading to a website or not one in the same.

Bonus points if you have any insight into whether or not this might be planned for future versions as a result of convergence, as that's something that's pretty native for mobile?

sabret00the
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  • There are programs that do this already. – Tim Sep 20 '15 at 11:54
  • http://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/199 – Tim Sep 20 '15 at 12:19
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    @sabret00the: I edited your question to ask for a currently possible way to directly upload screenshots, instead of whether there might be another one in the future. This makes sure your question is on-topic and does not attract guessing answers. If you disagree with my edit, feel free to roll it back to your original version. – Byte Commander Sep 20 '15 at 12:28
  • By "directly share screenshots", do you mean that you want the image file to remain on your computer and not be copied to a website? – Mark Plotnick Sep 20 '15 at 13:49
  • @MarkPlotnick I meant as though you'd take the screenshot and then be able to send to Telegram, Instant Messenger, etc WITHOUT having to save it locally or on the web. – sabret00the Sep 20 '15 at 15:39

2 Answers2

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You can use shutter instead of the default gnome-screenshot program.
Besides many interesting features it has in contrast to the default tool, it also allows automatic uploading of images to a list of hosting platforms, one of them is also imgur.com, the site used by StackExchange.

To install shutter, you simply open a Terminal window (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter:

sudo apt-get install shutter

If you then open and run shutter, you will get a window like this:

shutter main window

You can take a screensot e.g. using the Selection, Desktop or Window buttons, or discover one of the many more possibilities.

When you have taken the screenshot, you may click on Export to let the dialogue window below show up:

shutter export dialogue

Chose your preferred image hoster (I recommend Imgur Guest, because it is used by SE as well and does not require authentication) and click on Upload. It will send the image and show you a list of URLs referring to different functions and representations of your screenshot:

shutter upload URL list

You will probably usually want the link to the Original image, which you can either copy manually or by clicking on the quadratic button to the right of it.

After having closed the window, you can still access the URLs by right-clicking on the screenshot in Shutter and selecting from the context menu Public URLs --> Imgur (or whatever host you chose) the URL you want. A description of each one can be taken from the tooltip that appears if you hover over the link:

shutter screenshot context menu - public URLs

Then you can paste your screenshot link wherever you want. Enjoy! :)

Byte Commander
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    I am really puzzled about why shutter isn't the standard screenshot application... The only thing it misses are byzanz integration, but for images, it's plainly perfect. – Rmano Sep 20 '15 at 13:56
  • Sure it comes with a monstrous load of features, but I think gnome-screenshot has also its fans because of the simplicity. You can easily forget the time by discovering playing with shutter's features! ;) – Byte Commander Sep 20 '15 at 14:06
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    @sabret00the As you have not done that before: If this answer helped you, don't forget to click the grey ☑ at the left of this text, which means Yes, this answer is valid! ;-) – Byte Commander Sep 20 '15 at 18:09
  • @ByteCommander This answer, while I'm grateful for the effort it terrible. I stated "directly share" in my question, not "host on a website". It's actually frustrating to see it get voted up so many times when it's clearly not what I was asking. – sabret00the Sep 24 '15 at 20:44
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    @sabret00the Well, then I understood you wrong. But if you would have read how I edited your question to make it clearer what you ask (in my opinion), you would have noticed that much earlier! So then please [edit] your question again and make it obvious what exactly you mean by "directly share". Where do you want to share your images? For me, sharing and uploading is practically the same. – Byte Commander Sep 25 '15 at 06:50
  • @rmano it defies the Linux philosophy (same with VLC): software should do 1 thing and should do that good. – Rinzwind Sep 25 '15 at 08:30
  • @ByteCommander But you yourself acknowledge that there's a difference between sharing and uploading. Even in your edit, the fact that direct sharing is mentioned doesn't somehow suddenly encapsulate uploading. If it did, surely there would've been a mention of uploading, a word that was missing entirely from the question pre or post edit. But despite that, I remain grateful for the effort you've put in here. – sabret00the Sep 25 '15 at 10:50
  • @sabret00the You still did not make it really clear what your definition of "direct sharing" is. I would like to improve my answer if possible, but I can't try finding a better solution as long as I'm getting your problem wrong... – Byte Commander Sep 25 '15 at 10:57
  • @ByteCommander I've edited the original in order to try and clarify. – sabret00the Sep 25 '15 at 17:22
  • shutter can also copy the created screenshot to the clipboard instead of saving it on the disk. Would that help you? @sabret00the – Byte Commander Sep 25 '15 at 17:48
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This is exactly what you were looking for: https://screencloud.net/ you can upload and have a link saved to you clipboard automatically that you can share. It's available for linux too! arch, ubuntu, suse, fedora and debian are supported. DEBs available too as are repositories!

Luis Abellan
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