kapture

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What is Kapture?

Kapture is a free and open-source screenshot tool for Linux that puts capturing, scrolling (long) screenshots, OCR text recognition, image annotation, and screen recording into a single, keyboard-driven app. It is built with Python + PyQt5 and targets X11 desktops such as Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and KDE Plasma.

If you have been looking for a Linux alternative to Snipaste, ShareX, Flameshot, or a Linux scrolling screenshot / long screenshot tool with OCR, Kapture is built exactly for that.

✨ Features

📸 Capture

• Region capture — drag a box to grab any part of the screen.
• Window capture — click a window to capture it.
• Auto scrolling capture — Kapture scrolls the target and stitches every frame into one seamless long screenshot (perfect for web pages, chat logs, code, documents).
• Manual scrolling capture — you scroll, Kapture stitches.
• Repeat last area — re-shoot the exact same region instantly.
• Screen color picker — eyedropper any pixel on screen.

🖍️ Annotate

Rectangle · Ellipse · Arrow · Line · Pen · Text · Numbered steps · Highlight · Blur / mosaic (hide sensitive info) · Magnifier · Crop — with adjustable color & line width, plus undo and clear.

🔤 OCR (text recognition)

• Powered by Tesseract, recognizes Simplified / Traditional Chinese and English.
• Layout modes (block / auto / single column / single line) and an image-enhance toggle for accuracy.
• Extracted text is copied to the clipboard automatically.

🎬 Output & share

• Auto-copy to clipboard after capture, with a floating thumbnail in the corner.
• 📌 Pin to screen — keep a screenshot floating on top (drag to move, scroll to zoom, double-click to close).
• 🎨 Beautify export — gradient background, rounded corners, drop shadow.
• ⏺ Screen recording to MP4 / GIF with adjustable frame rate.
• 🕘 History of recent captures.

⚙️ Workflow

• Global keyboard shortcuts — bind any capture action system-wide (written straight into KDE).
• Configurable save folder, filename template, auto-copy / auto-save / open-editor behavior.
• Accent color themes and a bilingual UI (中文 / English).
• Lives quietly in the system tray, single-instance.

🖼️ Screenshots

Editor — capture, annotate & OCR	Settings — folders, shortcuts, OCR, theme

🚀 Installation

Requirements: an X11 session on Kubuntu / Ubuntu / KDE. Check with echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE — it should print x11.

Option A — .deb package (recommended)

Download the latest kapture_*_all.deb from the Releases page, then:

sudo apt install ./kapture_1.0.0_all.deb

apt pulls in Tesseract (Chinese + English), ffmpeg, fonts and the Qt runtime automatically. On first install it builds an isolated Python environment, so an internet connection is required during installation. Launch Kapture from your app menu, or run kapture. Uninstall with sudo apt remove kapture.

Option B — from source

# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/ycwei5/kapture.git
cd kapture

# 2. One-shot install (system deps + Python venv + app menu entry)
bash install.sh

The installer uses apt to install the Tesseract engine + Chinese language packs + ffmpeg, creates an isolated Python virtual environment with all dependencies, and registers a Kapture entry in your application menu.

▶️ Usage

• Search Kapture in your application menu, or run ./run.sh from the terminal.
• Kapture runs as a single instance and lives in the system tray (right-click to quit).
• Bind global shortcuts in ⚙ Settings → Shortcuts — they are written to KDE automatically.

Command line

run.sh jumps straight to an action — handy for binding to your own hotkeys:

./run.sh --region    # region capture
./run.sh --window    # window capture
./run.sh --scroll    # auto scrolling long screenshot
./run.sh --manual    # manual scrolling long screenshot
./run.sh --color     # screen color picker

💡 Tips for scrolling capture

• Select a scrollable target window (browser, chat, document). When capture starts, Kapture moves the cursor to the center of the selected area and sends scroll-wheel events — don’t move the mouse after it begins.
• Use the Speed control in the top bar; lower it for smooth-scrolling / lazy-loading pages.
• Sticky headers/footers may repeat in a long screenshot (a common limitation of scrolling capture); the current version does not auto-trim them.

📦 Dependencies

Type	Packages
System (apt)	tesseract-ocr, tesseract-ocr-chi-sim, tesseract-ocr-chi-tra, fonts-noto-cjk, ffmpeg
Python (venv)	PyQt5, mss, opencv-python-headless, numpy, pillow, pynput, pytesseract

❓ FAQ

Does Kapture work on Wayland? Not yet. Kapture targets X11, because simulated scrolling and full-screen grabbing are restricted under Wayland. Run on an X11 session (echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE → x11).

Which languages can the OCR read? Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and English (chi_sim+eng, chi_sim, chi_tra+eng, eng), powered by Tesseract. Recognized text is copied to your clipboard.

Can it take a full-page / long screenshot of a web page? Yes — that is the auto scrolling capture feature. Kapture scrolls and stitches frames into one tall image.

Is it free? Yes, Kapture is open source under the MIT License.

Which desktops are supported? Built and tested on Kubuntu / Ubuntu / KDE Plasma on X11. Other X11 desktops likely work; the global-shortcut writer is KDE-specific.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome! If you hit a bug or want a feature, please open an issue. The whole app is a single, readable kapture.py — easy to dive into.

📄 License

MIT © 2026 ycwei5

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