Screenshot Bug?

[asd]

Hi everybody, I think I ran into a somewhat annoying Bug:

1. Maybe before you try this, make sure there isn't anything vitally important on your PC you haven't saved.
2. press the Windows/Super key to bring up your search-menu
3. Press Shift+Print
4. If it's not just my pc that's doing weird stuff, there should be an error and your whole screen will be stuck in a blue-er state. And you might not be able to click on stuff in applications.

If you have the same problem, could somebody relay this to the Linux Mint - team?



(Also, I'm really new to Linux and open source but it's really fun, great job, Linux Mint team!)

[xenopeek]

Shift+Print by default is keyboard shortcut for "take a screenshot of an area". The mouse cursor changes to indicate this. You can then click and hold left mouse button and then from the point you clicked drag a rectangle to select an area. When you release the left mouse button it will take a screenshot of just that area. Escape key aborts.

If something else happened we're going to need a bit more detailed explanation of the issue.

You can find other keyboard shortcuts in System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts. This shortcut is under System > Screenshots and Recording. Similar you can take a screenshot of just the active window with Alt+Print or with any of the screenshot shortcuts add Ctrl key to instead of saving the screenshot to a file, copy it to the clipboard.

[asd]

Yeah, I know that PRINT is the key for taking screenshots and that SHIFT, CTRL and ALT modify it's function.

What I'm saying is that if you try to take a SHIFT+PRINT screenshot while the menu at the bottom-left of your screen is open, you'll encounter an error with the previously described effects.

-> there should be an error and your whole screen will be stuck in a blue-er (more blue) state. And you might not be able to click on stuff in applications.

[xenopeek]

Can you add which Linux Mint version and which desktop environment you're using? If you're unsure check System Info in your menu or run inxi -S on terminal.

[asd]

Sure, I hope this is what you need:

Kernel: 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: Cinnamon 4.6.6
Distro: Linux Mint 20 Ulyana

[Mick-Cork]

Not sure if it's relevant but just tried this on LM19.3 Cinnamon out of curiosity.
What happened here is that Shift+Print did not invoke the screenshot function if the menu was visible (worked otherwise).
There was no lock-up or freeze etc.

Not sure if it would be intentionally disabled in this scenario?

[Moem]

4. If it's not just my pc that's doing weird stuff, there should be an error and your whole screen will be stuck in a blue-er state. And you might not be able to click on stuff in applications.

What's the error? How is it communicated?

The blue sounds to me like your screen is waiting for you to select the area to screenprint. What happens if you drag your mouse to create a diagonal?

[xenopeek]

I've reported it as a bug here: https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/289. Please comment there to add other pertinent details. As I had already basically typed out the bug report in reply to you here, with suggestion for you to report it as a bug there, I went ahead and did that.

I can reproduce the issue on both Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon and Linux Mint 20 Xfce (after installing gnome-screenshot there), but not after downgrading to gnome-screenshot from the Ubuntu repositories or switching to xfce4-screenshooter though in fact those refuse to take a screenshot while the menu is open.

Quick recovery when this happens is to restart Cinnamon with Alt+F2 → r → Enter. After that the error dialog can be closed and the screen returns to normal.

You can still take a full screen screenshot of the open menu by pressing Print. You will just have to crop the image to the area you want.

See the bug report for further details.

[xenopeek]

Cause of the bug is found: it doesn't exit properly after showing the dialog why it can't take an area screenshot, which causes this weird state. It will be fixed in gnome-screenshot.

Just like upstream gnome-screenshot and xfce4-screenshooter, it can't take an area screenshot while the menu is open. That can't be fixed but unlike those other two it will show why it can't take the area screenshot and then exit properly.

[smurphos]

If you want a screenshot tool that can do area screenshots including menus for Mint 20 give flameshot a try. You can set it to delay capture to 'set-up' your screenshot.

[asd]

4. If it's not just my pc that's doing weird stuff, there should be an error and your whole screen will be stuck in a blue-er state. And you might not be able to click on stuff in applications.

What's the error? How is it communicated?

https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/289

I've reported it as a bug here: https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/289. Please comment there to add other pertinent details. As I had already basically typed out the bug report in reply to you here, with suggestion for you to report it as a bug there, I went ahead and did that.

Amazing, thank you! I read it and couldn't think of anything to add.

You can still take a full screen screenshot of the open menu by pressing Print. You will just have to crop the image to the area you want.

Yup, that's what I ended up doing.

Cause of the bug is found: it doesn't exit properly after showing the dialog why it can't take an area screenshot, which causes this weird state. It will be fixed in gnome-screenshot.

Just like upstream gnome-screenshot and xfce4-screenshooter, it can't take an area screenshot while the menu is open. That can't be fixed but unlike those other two it will show why it can't take the area screenshot and then exit properly.

That's a little weird, why doesn't area-screenshotting work with an open menu? Anyway, preventing the lock-up definitely is a big improvement!

Btw, the way I got out of that blue-tinted state was to press ALT+F4 until, eventually, the error-window gets closed.

[Moem]

What's the error? How is it communicated?

https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/289

Thanks. I'm trying to indicate that if you get an error message, it's pretty much always useful to say what it is. 'There is an error' hardly ever helps anyone.

[Tobs40]

Hello,

I pressed Strg + Shift + PrintSrc on Linux Mint 20 C. a window opened telling me that every method of taking a screenshot had failed (I wanted to take a screenshot in Firefox). I ignored the window, pressed it again, was able to take the screenshot I wanted - but it was orange. I pasted it into Anki (which btw. would be REALLY REALLY nice if you could add the only working version = lates version to apt-get because a lot of people are using it) - and it was orange... From there on I couldn't click on anything in Firefox or Anki, I tried hard switching between applications and desktop. In the end I freed myself from Anki by using Alt + F4 and I don't remember exactly, but then it kind of went away. Maybe it was because of that error window in the background about the screenshot having failed?

Regards, Tobi

PS: Don't forget that Anki thing pls

[LuizAsFight]

I got the same error here.

The way to don't get stuck is:
- use alt+tab to find the error popup
- press TAB to focus the "ok" button
- once you have the button focused, press space