EShot

Native screenshot, annotation, OCR, visual-search, upload, GIF, and video capture for Windows and Linux.

EShot keeps the complete screenshot workflow in one compact tray application: select a region, annotate it, copy or save it, extract text, search the image, upload it, pin it above other windows, or record it as GIF/MP4.

Windows	Linux (CachyOS / KDE Plasma 6)

• Region and monitor capture with multi-monitor and high-DPI handling, plus window selection capture on Windows
• Compact selection overlay with configurable actions and shortcuts
• Pen, arrow, line, rectangle, ellipse, text, highlighter, smooth blur, pixelate, counter, eraser, and eyedropper tools
• Resize and rotate selected text and shapes directly on the canvas
• Hold Shift while drawing with the highlighter to lock it to the nearest axis
• Undo/redo, selection locking, color controls, and configurable toolbar visibility
• Tesseract OCR with selectable language packs, copy, retry, and one-click Google Translate handoff
• Google Lens or Yandex Images visual search for the selected region
• Screenshot uploads to Catbox, Uguu, Litterbox, TmpFiles.org, temp.sh, Allwebs, Radikal Cloud, Google Drive, and Yandex Disk
• Always-on-top pinned captures
• Selected-region GIF recording
• MP4 recording with configurable FPS, quality, duration, desktop audio, and microphone audio
• Real microphone-device selection on Linux and Windows
• Global capture and direct screenshot/GIF/video hotkeys
• Configurable pause, stop, and cancel recording shortcuts
• Settings import/export and automatic release checks
• Self-update support for installed AppImages

Start a capture from the tray icon, Print Screen, a custom global shortcut, a direct-action shortcut, or the command line. Select a region and use the overlay toolbar to annotate, OCR, search, upload, pin, copy, save, or begin recording.

Double-clicking a screen during selection captures that complete monitor. The overlay adapts to tight spaces and scaled multi-monitor layouts.

Download the latest build from GitHub Releases.

1. Download EShot_Setup_v<version>_x64.exe or the ARM64 installer.
2. Run the installer and choose the optional FFmpeg/OCR components you need.
3. Launch EShot from the Start menu or system tray.

The installer defaults to the current user and does not require administrator permission. An all-users install is optional and may require an administrator account; each account can enable auto-start from EShot Settings. Existing all-users installations stay in that mode when updated; uninstall the old installation first if you want to switch to a per-user install. For all-users installs, uninstall can remove per-user auto-start entries only from profiles loaded at that time. Windows may restrict capture or keyboard focus over applications running as administrator and the UAC secure desktop. To capture them, turn on Start as administrator in Settings: after one administrator prompt, EShot starts elevated without further prompts.

Portable x64 and ARM64 ZIP archives are also attached to each release.

KDE Plasma 6 Wayland and GNOME Wayland are supported Linux targets. KDE Plasma is the primary tested environment. GNOME is stable for normal use, although its wider real-world testing coverage is still smaller. As with any Wayland desktop, portal versions can affect capture, shortcuts, tray integration, and recording behavior.

Do not open the AppImage with Gear Lever, AppImageLauncher or another AppImage manager; EShot integrates and updates itself (see the warning at the top).

1. Download EShot-v<version>-x86_64.AppImage.

2. Mark it executable:

   chmod +x EShot-v*-x86_64.AppImage

3. Start it from a terminal:

   ./EShot-v*-x86_64.AppImage

   KDE Plasma commonly offers a graphical launch flow after the file is executable. Stock GNOME Files does not register AppImages as applications, so double-clicking can show an "open with" prompt instead of starting EShot. Running the two commands above is the reliable first-launch method on GNOME. Avoid AppImage managers such as AppImageLauncher or Gear Lever for EShot; they move the file and skip EShot's own setup and updates.

4. Complete the graphical first-run wizard. It can install FFmpeg/GStreamer, PipeWire portal components, Tesseract, selected OCR languages, and optional application-menu integration through the system package manager.

5. Use Use Print Screen for EShot to assign Print Screen. KDE keeps Spectacle's other shortcuts. GNOME uses the Global Shortcuts portal when available and an EShot-only custom shortcut on older GNOME releases.

The AppImage is portable. Opening it does not install EShot system-wide. The Welcome screen appears only on the first launch; completing or skipping the optional setup marks it complete, so it does not return on later launches.

When Add EShot to the application menu and install shortcuts is selected, the setup copies the AppImage to ~/.local/opt/EShot/EShot.AppImage, creates an application-menu entry, and restarts from that managed copy after successful setup. Launch EShot from the application menu after that point. The original file in Downloads remains a separate portable copy and can be removed once the menu entry works. If the option is not selected, nothing is copied and you continue launching the same AppImage manually.

The AppImage bundles EShot and Qt. Optional media, OCR, and desktop-integration packages remain system packages. Skipped dependencies can be installed later from Settings → Open Linux dependency setup. A native package such as the AUR package is the smoother option for users who want an ordinary application-menu entry and package-manager updates.

Each release also includes EShot-v<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz for users who prefer an unpacked build. Unlike the AppImage, this archive relies on compatible Qt and runtime libraries installed by the Linux distribution.

Integrated AppImages are stored for the current user under ~/.local/opt/EShot. EShot checks for updates and always keeps manual updating available. If a per-user Windows installation or integrated AppImage is at least two stable releases behind, EShot downloads the matching release asset, verifies its GitHub SHA-256 digest, updates silently, and restarts. All-users Windows installations require an administrator for updates. The AUR package (eshot-bin) and the .tar.gz archive are updated through the package manager or a new download; EShot only reports new releases there and does not replace them itself.

Install the EShot-maintained AUR binary package with an AUR helper:

yay -S eshot-bin

The package installs the release AppImage and its desktop entry through pacman. Update it with your normal AUR helper rather than EShot's AppImage updater.

Use Settings → General → Remove EShot from this system, or run --uninstall from a terminal in your desktop session. Either way EShot asks a running instance to quit, then:

• gives Print Screen back to the desktop: GNOME gets its screenshot UI shortcut back and EShot's custom keybinding is removed; on KDE, EShot's global shortcuts are removed and Spectacle gets plain Print back if EShot had taken it;
• removes the autostart entry and the KWin screenshot permission entry;
• for AppImage installs, also removes the integrated copy (~/.local/opt/EShot), the application menu entry and EShot's icons.

# AppImage
~/.local/opt/EShot/EShot.AppImage --uninstall

# AUR: clean up first, then remove the package
eshot --uninstall
sudo pacman -R eshot-bin

For the AUR package and the .tar.gz archive, files owned by the package manager or the extracted folder are left alone. Settings in ~/.config/EShot and your saved screenshots and recordings are kept; delete them yourself if you no longer need them.

• Wayland screenshots and recordings use XDG Desktop Portal and PipeWire.
• KDE global shortcuts use KGlobalAccel. GNOME uses the Global Shortcuts portal where available and can install an EShot-only GNOME custom shortcut as a compatibility fallback.
• Stock GNOME does not expose legacy tray icons. When no tray integration is available, launching EShot from the application list opens a compact control window with Capture, Settings, About, and Quit. Autostart remains silent. Print Screen and custom shortcuts continue to work independently of the tray.
• GNOME screenshots are delivered through its secure Screenshot portal. EShot warms that service at startup, but the portal still adds a short delay before the selection panel appears. This varies by GNOME and portal version and is expected on Wayland.
• GNOME and KDE Wayland use an XWayland selection overlay so text entry, focus, one-canvas multi-monitor selection and the placement of pinned images and recording controls behave consistently. On KDE, ESHOT_CAPTURE_BACKEND=wayland opts into experimental per-output native surfaces, which give sharper previews on mixed-DPI setups but cannot place pinned images or the recording frame.
• GIF recording uses GStreamer for portal capture and FFmpeg for final GIF encoding.
• MP4 recording requires a GStreamer AAC encoder when audio is enabled.
• Screen recording permission is handled by the desktop portal. EShot stores a separate restore token per monitor when the portal supports persistent sessions.
• A recorded region must fit inside one monitor. If the portal opens a monitor chooser, select the monitor containing the region.
• The optional dependency setup uses the PackageKit session installer when the desktop provides it, then falls back to the native pacman, apt or dnf workflow. On Fedora, packages the enabled repositories do not provide (such as RPM Fusion packages) are skipped instead of failing the whole install.
• Fedora: the setup installs ffmpeg-free and the GStreamer plugins from Fedora's own repositories. MP4 recording needs x264enc from RPM Fusion's gstreamer1-plugins-ugly; enable RPM Fusion (free and nonfree) before running the setup, or install that package afterwards.

Choose Google Lens or Yandex Images in Settings. EShot uploads only the selected region to a temporary public image host and opens the chosen visual-search provider with that temporary URL.

Do not use visual search for private or sensitive screenshots.

OCR is powered by Tesseract. The first-run wizard can install English, the system language, and additional language data. Missing languages remain visible but disabled so the missing dependency is clear. The OCR result dialog can copy recognized text or open it in Google Translate. Translation opens the browser and does not send OCR text through an EShot translation service.

Anonymous providers work without credentials. Google Drive and Yandex Disk require OAuth access tokens; Allwebs and Radikal Cloud require service API keys. OAuth tokens are stored in the operating system credential store, never in EShot's plain-text settings file.

1. Open Google OAuth 2.0 Playground.

2. Select the Drive API v3 scope:

   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file
   

3. Authorize the scope and exchange the authorization code for tokens.

4. Copy the access_token, or copy the complete JSON response.

5. Paste it into EShot's Google Drive token field.

OAuth Playground access tokens expire. Generate a new token if an upload later returns HTTP 401.

Most shortcuts can be changed in Settings.

# Windows
EShot.exe --capture
EShot.exe --save "C:\path\to\capture.png"
EShot.exe --silent

# Linux
EShot --capture
EShot --save "$HOME/Pictures/capture.png"
EShot --silent
EShot --quit
EShot --uninstall  # restore Print Screen and remove desktop integration

# Native packages also install the lowercase launcher:
eshot --capture

• Questions and help: ask in Discussions → Q&A.
• Ideas and feature requests: post them in Discussions → Ideas, where others can vote on them.
• Bugs: open an issue. Include your EShot version, OS and, on Linux, your desktop (KDE/GNOME) and session (Wayland/X11).

Core requirements:

• CMake 3.16+
• C++17 compiler
• Qt 6 Core, GUI, Widgets, Network, and DBus on Linux

Ubuntu/Debian and CachyOS/Arch dependency helpers are included:

./scripts/linux/install-ubuntu-deps.sh
# or
./scripts/linux/install-cachyos-deps.sh

./scripts/linux/check-linux-runtime.sh
./scripts/linux/build-linux.sh
./dist-linux/bin/EShot

Build the AppImage:

./scripts/linux/build-appimage.sh

cmake -S . -B build -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release --parallel

Build the installer with Inno Setup 6:

iscc EShot_Setup.iss

EShot uses Qt, Tesseract OCR, FFmpeg, GStreamer, PipeWire, XDG Desktop Portal, and Inno Setup. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for licensing details.

EShot is released under the MIT License.