GNOME Screenshot can't copy to clipboard in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I just freshly installed Ubuntu 18.04 and downloaded the latest updates. I'm having trouble taking screenshots to clipboard using the built-in gnome-screenshot tool. The default keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+PrintScreen and Ctrl+Shift+PrintScreen don't appear to work (makes the shutter sound, but empty clipboard and nothing saved in Pictures folder either), and using gnome-screenshot -c in the terminal is similarly ineffective.

I've read that gnome-screenshot had clipboard issues with Wayland, but my understanding is that 18.04 defaults to Xorg. Checking my login settings, the default is "Ubuntu," with a secondary "Ubuntu on Wayland" option. I'm just using the default.

Answer 1

Not sure if this is related - in my case (fresh Ubuntu 19.10), gnome-screenshot -c would put the captured image to the clipboard, but somehow I can only paste it in certain applications (e.g. Gimp) while not in others (e.g. Chrome).

Found a workaround by (assigning to a shortcut) this:

gnome-screenshot -acf /tmp/test && cat /tmp/test | xclip -i -selection clipboard -target image/png

Answer 2

I had the same problem in Ubuntu 20.04: gnome-screenshot -a -c was not copying to clipboard.

The solution was to ensure xclip was installed with:

sudo apt install xclip

• gnome-screenshot version = 3.36.0
• xclip version = 0.13-1

Answer 3

My workaround is (for Ubuntu 2204, GNOME 42): Switching from wayland to xorg and made a custom keyboard shortcut with the following command: gnome-screenshot -a -c --file=/tmp/screenshot_tmp.png

Answer 4

Today I had a similar problem under Oracle Linux 8: It wouldn't copy to the clipboard. I could resolve this with running the command:

env GDK_BACKEND=x11 gnome-screenshot -i

Note the x, it is not capital X as usual!

You may enter -c instead of -i, of course. On this Oracle Linux 8 machine other applications couldn't create a window at all without the GDK_BACKEND setting.

Answer 5

You have to use Ctrl+Alt+PrintScreen instead of Alt+PrintScreen.

Answer 6

I had this problem on Ubuntu 20.04 but I couldn't get it working from a custom shortcut key. I had to write a bash script.

Note: I also had to install xclip as shown in Ben's answer.

Here it is:

1. Run:

   nano screengrab.sh
   

2. Add the following text:

   rm -rf /home/user/Pictures/2.png 
   gnome-screenshot -acf /home/user/Pictures/2.png
   

   Note: Your PNG file can be named anything, just make sure you delete the same named file first and then it will be created each time by the gnome-screenshot app. If you don't delete it or you have the wrong file name each time, it will fail silently.

3. Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O followed by Ctrl+X.

4. Make the script executable:

   chmod a+x screengrab.sh
   

5. Open Settings → Keyboard and add a new shortcut with the details shown in the image below:

   

Answer 7

For people running a Wayland session, binding the following to a shortcut should work

gnome-screenshot -af /tmp/tmp_screenshot.png && wl-copy -ot image/png < /tmp/tmp_screenshot.png

Same principle as Ferrard is using really, just adapted for Wayland.

You need to have wl-clipboard installed.

Also, you might have to put this in a script and call that (I did, because my machine does not seem to like executing multiple commands in one shortcut, YMMV though).

Answer 8

Try find $HOME -name "Screenshot*" to see if the screenshots are being saved in an unexpected location. Also check Settings|Keyboard Shortcuts. In a recently upgraded 20.04.1 (from 18.04) gnome-screenshot saved the png images in $HOME instead $HOME/Pictures as before.