elementary / elementary/portals

Option to freeze screen while using area select

Open
#112 0 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Needs Design
Dominant language
Vala
Stars
24
Forks
7
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

### Problem

In some cases it can be desirable to have the background freeze while drawing the area to take the screenshot from. Examples can include things that are moving/animated, something that could (potentially) vanish while you're drawing the area (like a notification that only lasts for a couple of seconds), frames from videos, ...

If the background would freeze up when entering area select mode, you would get a view of the exact screenshot you're going to take while drawing the rectangle, and you could potentially take time to make the area a bit cleaner instead of having to very quickly draw something before it's too late.

Essentially, this takes a snapshot of what your screen looks like when pressing the hotkey (complete screenshot), displays that, and lets you select an area from _that_ instead of from the live background.

### Proposal

A setting in the app that can be toggled on/off, off by default so people that are used to the current system don't have to notice the change.

### Prior Art (Optional)

- [Flameshot's area select](https://github.com/flameshot-org/flameshot#preview)
- [KDE Spectacle](https://github.com/KDE/spectacle)
- Windows 10 snipping tool (`win + shift + s`)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Start by locating the existing area-select flow and screenshot capture path, then inspect how application settings are defined and applied. Done means an off-by-default setting freezes the screen on entry and allows selecting the intended area from that snapshot.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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