Capture

One key opens a thing you can look at. SUPER SHIFT S photographs the screen the keyboard is on and shows that photograph over it, with a bar at its foot saying what is about to happen. You draw on the photograph, and the crop is cut from the same pixels — so nothing has to be frozen, and a menu that closes when the pointer moves is already in the picture. So is a panel open in the island: it waits under the surface, and is still open when the surface closes.

Keys

Key	Does
SUPER SHIFT S, or Print	Opens the capture surface
SUPER SHIFT R	Records the screen the keyboard is on, or stops the recording
SUPER SHIFT C	Picks a colour off the screen

The Capture, Annotate, Read text, Colour and Record tiles in the control centre do the same, and so do the rows of the same names under > in the launcher. The bar’s Capture button, placed from the layout editor, opens the surface as the key does.

The surface

The bar at the foot draws every choice as a glyph, in three groups, and the one under the pointer says its name above the bar:

Group	Choices
Shape	Region, Window, Screen
Kind	Photo, Video
Then	For a photo: Save, Copy, Annotate, Read text. For a video: No sound, Sound.

• Region — drag a box. Everything outside it is washed back, and its size rides above it. Letting go takes it.
• Window — the window under the pointer is outlined; a click takes it.
• Screen — a click takes the whole screen.

Key	Does
1 2 3	Region, Window, Screen
Enter or Space	Takes the screen, or the window under the pointer
Escape, or the right button	Cancels, and nothing is kept

It opens on the shape and kind you used last. Where a photo goes always starts back at Save: annotating or reading text is chosen each time.

What happens to a photo

Choice	What happens
Save	Saved to the captures folder and copied to the clipboard; the island shows the file’s name
Copy	Copied to the clipboard only
Annotate	Opens in satty. What you save from it goes to the captures folder, and its copy button puts it on the clipboard.
Read text	Read with tesseract and copied as text; the island says how many characters

Annotate is only offered with satty installed, and Read text with tesseract. It reads English, and Spanish too when its language pack (tesseract-data-spa) is installed.

The captures folder is XDG_SCREENSHOTS_DIR when your user-dirs.dirs names one, and otherwise a Screenshots folder inside your pictures folder. Files are named by the moment they were taken, as 2026-09-13-101500_impasto.png.

Recording

SUPER SHIFT R records the screen the keyboard is on, at once, and the same key stops it. The Record tile in the control centre does the same. A region or a window is recorded from the surface: choose Video, then draw the box or click the window, and the take starts; Screen in Video records that whole screen.

• While it runs, a red dot and the minutes sit beside the time on the island. A click on the dot stops it; so do the key and the Record tile.
• Sound is chosen on the surface, beside Video, and holds for the key and the tile too. It records what the machine plays, not the microphone, and is only there when there is an output to record from.
• The take is written with wl-screenrec, or with wf-recorder when wl-screenrec is missing or will not start, as an mp4 named like 2026-09-13-101500_impasto.mp4 — in XDG_SCREENCASTS_DIR, or a Screencasts folder inside your videos folder.
• The island says Recording when it starts and Recorded with the length when it stops. A recording keeps going if the shell is restarted, and the shell picks it back up.

The recording is of the live screen: the box is where it records, not the photograph it was drawn on.

Colour

SUPER SHIFT C freezes the screen with hyprpicker; click a pixel and its hex code goes onto the clipboard, and the island shows it.

Keys for one shape

Five more captures are registered and bound to nothing: Capture a region, Capture a window, Capture the screen, Capture and annotate and Read a region. Each opens the surface already set to that shape and destination. Give any of them a key under Settings → Keys → The shell’s own.

Note

The surface covers one screen, and there is no timer, no pointer in the picture and no scrolling capture. Window mode only sees windows on the workspace you are on. A recording has no pause and records one take at a time. See limitations.