xl-Screenshot and xl-Annotate

Two small apps for Linux Mint and the Cinnamon desktop, installed together:

• xl-Screenshot: Screen, Window, and Selection captures.
• xl-Annotate: simple, light markup for images and screenshots: arrows, lines, freehand drawing, rectangles, ellipses, highlighter, text, numbered steps, pixelate, a magnifying loupe and crop. Rough freehand lines, arrows, circles and boxes are tidied into clean shapes (Keep My Drawing undoes that; the menu turns it off). Each mark has a line and a fill colour (solid, see-through or none), a size, a line style and an optional shadow, and stays editable (move, reshape, restyle, delete) until you save. It runs on its own, or from xl-Screenshot's Annotate button.

Download the latest .deb

Screenshots

Shown in Linux Mint's Mint-Y and Mint-Y-Dark themes; both apps follow whichever theme you use.

Mint-Y	Mint-Y-Dark
xl-Screenshot: choose Screen, Window or Selection, with an optional delay
After a capture: save it, copy it, or annotate it (or double-click the thumbnail)
Selection: drag over the desktop, adjust with the handles, then Capture Selection
xl-Annotate: arrows, steps, notes, a loupe and more, all editable until you save

Trying the menu entries and Nemo's "Annotate Image…"

sudo apt install gettext make
./install-local.sh

Adds xl-Screenshot (Accessories) and xl-Annotate (Graphics) to the menu, puts xl-Annotate in Nemo's Open With, and adds "Annotate Image…" to Nemo's right-click menu for images. Everything goes in your home folder (~/.local/share) and points at this folder; no sudo. Close Nemo (nemo -q) so it picks up the new item. ./install-local.sh --uninstall removes it all.

Works on

xl-Screenshot needs an X11 desktop session. It's made for Linux Mint's Cinnamon desktop, and looks at home on other GTK desktops too.

Tested

• Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon: everyday use.
• Ubuntu 24.04 (the base of Mint 22): the .deb installs, and the automatic tests run on it after every change.

Should work: not tried yet, reports welcome

Desktop	For example	Notes
Cinnamon	Linux Mint 21, LMDE, Fedora Cinnamon, Debian	Everything, including Nemo's "Annotate Image…"
Xfce	Linux Mint Xfce, Xubuntu, MX Linux, Debian, Fedora Xfce	No right-click item (Thunar is the file manager)
MATE	Linux Mint MATE, Ubuntu MATE, Debian, Fedora MATE	No right-click item (Caja is the file manager)
Budgie	Ubuntu Budgie	No right-click item

The tray icon uses Mint's XApp library (gir1.2-xapp-1.0), which Debian and Ubuntu also package. On Debian and Ubuntu based systems the .deb should install as it is.

Doesn't work: Wayland sessions

Screen, Window and Selection captures need X11, so xl-Screenshot can't capture on Wayland, the default for GNOME (Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation), KDE Plasma 6 and COSMIC. xl-Annotate doesn't depend on X11 and may work there on its own, but that hasn't been tried.

Tried it somewhere else? Please say how it went in an issue, working or not, so this list can grow.

Installing

sudo apt install ./xl-screenshot_0.1.1_all.deb

This installs both apps (menu: Accessories and Graphics), their icons, the man pages, and Nemo's "Annotate Image…", along with what they need (GTK, xdotool, x11-utils, python3-xlib and Mint's tray support). Remove it with sudo apt remove xl-screenshot.

If you used install-local.sh before, run ./install-local.sh --uninstall first, so the menu doesn't show each app twice.

Building the .deb

sudo apt install debhelper dh-python gettext
make deb

The package is written to the folder above this one. The version comes from debian/changelog (keep it in step with APP_VERSION in both config.py files and the <release> in the metainfo files).

Running from this folder

make                    # once, to build the translations
./usr/bin/xl-screenshot

Options:

• --selection (-s): start a Selection capture right away. If xl-Screenshot is already running, the running copy starts the capture instead.
• --tray (-t): start with just the tray icon (what the login entry uses).
• --version (-v): show the version and quit.

System tray (optional): turn on Show in System Tray in xl-Screenshot's menu. Clicking the tray icon starts a Selection capture; right-clicking it offers Show, Screen, Window, Selection and Quit. While it's on, closing the window only hides it, and xl-Screenshot starts at login (~/.config/autostart/io.github.xlcheese.XlScreenshot.desktop). Turning it off removes the icon and the login entry. Needs gir1.2-xapp-1.0 (part of Mint).

Only one copy runs at a time; starting it again brings up the window that is already open.

./usr/bin/xl-annotate [IMAGE...]

Opens each image in its own window (or an empty window with no image). Shortcuts: Ctrl+O open, Ctrl+S save, Shift+Ctrl+S save as, Ctrl+V paste an image, Ctrl+C copy, Ctrl+Z / Shift+Ctrl+Z undo / redo, Delete removes the selected mark, Esc lets go of it. In Crop: Enter crops, Esc cancels. Hold Shift while drawing for 45° lines and squares/circles, or while moving to go straight across or down. Zoom: Ctrl++ / Ctrl+− / Ctrl+scroll, Ctrl+0 fits the window, Ctrl+1 shows actual size. Text: Enter finishes, Shift+Enter starts a new line.

Needs

python3-gi, python3-gi-cairo, gir1.2-gtk-3.0, xdotool and x11-utils (for Window captures), and python3-xlib (for Esc to cancel). webp-pixbuf-loader is optional, for saving WebP.

Layout

The folders mirror where the files go once installed:

Path	What
usr/bin/xl-screenshot, usr/bin/xl-annotate	the commands
usr/lib/xl-screenshot/xlscreenshot/	xl-Screenshot
usr/lib/xl-screenshot/xlannotate/	xl-Annotate
usr/lib/xl-screenshot/xlshared/	dialogs and helpers both apps use
usr/share/icons/hicolor/*/apps/	the two app icons (scalable, plus hand-drawn 32, 24 and 16 px)
usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/actions/	button and tool icons
data/	templates for the menu entries and Nemo's "Annotate Image…" (make writes them into usr/share/, translated)
po/	translations (one .po file per language)
install-local.sh	try the menu entries and Nemo item before there's a .deb
tests/	the automatic tests (make check)
docs/screenshots/	the pictures on this page

Inside xlscreenshot/:

Module	What
application.py	start-up, single copy, command-line options
window.py	the main window: buttons, delay, thumbnail, save and copy
selection.py	the full-screen overlay for drawing a selection
capture.py	grabbing the screen, a region or a window
escape_grab.py	Esc to cancel while our windows are hidden
tray.py	the optional tray icon and starting at login
config.py	name, version, settings file

Inside xlannotate/: window.py (header bar, tool bar, open/save), canvas.py (showing the image, the tools, undo), shapes.py (the marks), tidy.py (recognising rough freehand shapes), application.py and config.py.

Settings are kept in ~/.config/xl-screenshot/config.json and ~/.config/xl-annotate/config.json. Settings from before the rename (~/.config/xlscreenshot/) are copied over on first start.

Tests

About 425 automatic checks cover both apps. They run on every change on GitHub, and you can run them yourself with make check: see tests/README.md.

Translations

xl-Screenshot and xl-Annotate follow your desktop's language. They come with German, Spanish, French and Brazilian Portuguese. These are drafts written with the help of an AI and still need checking by native speakers: corrections are very welcome.

make compiles po/*.po into usr/share/locale/, and writes the menu entries and the Nemo item with their translations. To try a language without changing your desktop:

LANGUAGE=de ./usr/bin/xl-annotate

(Quit any copy that's already running first, since a second start just brings up the open window.)

Adding a language (for example Italian, it):

1. msginit --locale=it --input=po/xl-screenshot.pot --output-file=po/it.po
2. Translate the strings in po/it.po (Poedit or any text editor). Keep {name}-style placeholders as they are, and one _ in button labels (it marks the Alt+ letter).
3. Add it to po/LINGUAS, then run make.

After changing any text in the code run make pot. It updates po/xl-screenshot.pot and merges the new strings into every .po file, ready for translating.

Credits

The pointer in the xl-Screenshot app icon is the outline of Linux Mint's default cursor, Bibata Modern Classic by Abdulkaiz Khatri (GPL-3.0).