Linux Mint developers are building a new screenshot utility for the Cinnamon desktop, ahead of its next major release.
The home-grown tool will give users more options when taking screenshots and will “accommodate the differences between CSD (Client Side Decoration) and SSD (Server Side Decoration) windows” to provide ‘cleaner’ looking screenshots.
Currently, Cinnamon rolls with the GTK-based gnome-screenshot.
That tool works fine, but it doesn’t render shadows in windowed app screenshots on Cinnamon. It does, however, include pixel artefacts around the corners of windows, caused by the drop shadow bleeding through:
It’s not super pretty, and as someone who works with screenshots for article graphics in my coverage, I spend time masking them out ‘in the edit’.
The new tool can take app windowed screenshots with shadows (or not; it’s optional). For CSD, the shadows are rendered by the app toolkit. For SSD applications, The Muffin window manager calculates and applies the shadow.
If app window screenshots are taken without shadows (just the frame), Linux Mint says the new tool automatically cleans up window corners to remove the semi-transparent dark pixels – addressing my own pet peeve.
Besides those, the new tool supports snapping full desktop, specific monitor or selected areas too. The command-line side is said to work ‘largely the same’ as in gnome-screenshot.
The new screenshot utility adds multi-monitor support, so users can screenshot all of their connected displays at the same time.
It also bakes-in a cropping tool with undo, making it easy to adjust image composition prior to saving.
Features from the old tool, like a toggle to show or hide pointer and a delay timer to take screenshots on a countdown carry over to the new tool.
And there’s a setting to automatically open the file manager with the saved screenshot pre-selected after a successful save.
When will this be available to try?
The next major update to Cinnamon will be released closer to the time of the next major release of Linux Mint, earmarked for the end of 2026 (and based Ubuntu 26.04 LTS).