19 ms·

Take more screenshots (2022)

369 points by sanketpatrikar 4y ago

urda 4y ago
I love screenshots. In many of my internal code reviews and changes I will include them to demonstrate or highlight changes. Take more screenshots! Let me see what you see!
_8j50 4y ago
I actually am in a position where I need to take a screenshot but haven't found any tool on linux that has the right UX like macos builtin screenshot or on windows, greenshot and lightshot. I want to press printscr or some shortcut and immediately screenshot an area of the screen or the whole screen and by default have it saved to a numerically incrementing files under a folder I configure and not have to close or interact with any popups. This is on Linux. Any recommendations?
- doerinrw 4y ago
  I think this is highly dependent on your distro (and comfort with the CLI but I'm taking that for granted on HN) but I found the gnome screenshot to be very simple, quick, and effective. Piping a hotkey to a CLI command is presumably easy, and after 5s of googling I found the guide below for Gnome. Not exactly fancy and I haven't used this specific tool recently enough to say whether it meets all your requirements exactly (e.g. you might need to press "Enter" once to close a popup), but I think a solution like this might fit the Linux ethos best! https://linux.die.net/man/1/gnome-screenshot https://linux.die.net/man/1/gnome-screenshot https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/proc_setting-key-shortcut/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/proc_setting...
  - _8j50 4y ago
    Thanks, will check it out, my main problem with gnome-* is the package pulling in gnome deps into my "minimal" lxqt environment.
- cwaffles 4y ago
  I can recommend flameshot[0]. It has good editing tools built-in, low dependencies, and is ergonomic. [0] https://flameshot.org/ https://flameshot.org/
  - _8j50 4y ago
    Thanks, from the demo gifs on that page, this is my favorite so far.
- RheingoldRiver 4y ago
  I use Sharex on Windows and I don't think there's any better tool, so I searched for "run sharex on linux" and there is indeed a guide - https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/issues/6531 https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/issues/6531 - maybe you can get it to work? I believe it can do all of the things you want. Certainly area capture, remembered area capture, fullscreen capture, all bound to different hotkeys. Mine saves with the name = the timestamp but you can probably config it to be an incrementing index. It's incredibly full-featured. I also have hotkeys for "capture current pixel's hex code" and "measure bounded box in pixels." When you take a capture you can also annotate it including showing labeled steps. After capture you can do one or more of: save locally (to one or more places), upload (to one or more hosts), copy to clipboard, etc. That includes pastebin if you have text saved to your clipboard so I use this for that also.
  - kroltan 4y ago
    I can't recommend ShareX enough, it is the most well thought out, intuitive and comprehensive tool for handling screenshots. I really miss it on Linux, I'll try that guide.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    Thanks, looks featureful. But I really need it very stable so running it in wine is a dealbreaker, since I already have a wine setup I have to fumble with a lot to get different windows executables to behave in certain ways.
- mfkp 4y ago
  I've been using https://screencloud.net/ https://screencloud.net/ for the past few years. Custom file naming rules, you can upload to your own FTP server, then it will automatically copy a link to the file. Works perfectly for sharing and archiving screenshots.
  - sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
    It's best to just use a printer, makes it easy to review screenshots I've taken at night or in the loo
- julianeon 4y ago
  I use i3 and I think I pretty much had that at one time… Basically I bound a key combo to a script, and that script would call scrot (the app), screenshot, and save the picture to date_plus_random_4_digit_number.png. I think I wrote that script in Ruby and put it in .local/bin. But you could write it in another language too.
- namibj 4y ago
  If you can deal with it being a datetime name, a script that generates the filename and calls `maim` should be really easy, just to be hooked up to the key combination through the desktop environment/window manager. Make two to distinguish between "save entire screen" and "let me drag a selection that it will save".
thejarren 4y ago
I take screenshots all the time, and sync them to iCloud so I can access them immediately on my phone/iPad. I also back up previous years of screenshots, I think I have back to 2015 right now. But one thing that I've been keeping my eye on as well (and used for a month) is https://www.rewind.ai/ https://www.rewind.ai/ which records everything that happens on your M1/M2 mac screen and is immediately searchable. Just like Alex says here "They’re not as good as having the original, working thing – but they’re much better than nothing. I can dip in quickly and easily, and instantly be reminded of the creativity of my past self." And I think arguably Rewind solves for that completely (with the added cost of increased storage space and less specific capturing/resolution). This isn't a pitch for their product, it's just a natural progression to screenshots/capture that I believe is relevant here.
- thejarren 4y ago
  As an added note, I stopped using Rewind because of the "steep" monthly cost ($20 a month), and the fact that I'd only want to use it as a backup to use long term. Upon reflection, $240 a year to have completely uncut video of my computer screen instantly searchable forever is a very valuable offering. Not to mention the fact that the file size is fairly small compared to large 4k videos. If it were built into macOS I'd be blown away and use it forever, still on the fence about it.
  - benatkin 4y ago
    It's a niche product it seems. I have zero interest in it.
    - stavros 4y ago
      I mean, I have zero interest in Instagram, but that doesn't make it a niche product.
    - thejarren 4y ago
      That makes sense. This archive tool is even more out there because it's not a direct link or file of the content, but just a capture of what the content would be. My work is mostly UI/UX and design related, so the capture is actually pretty valuable. I'm a bit of a digital packrat, and sometimes like to review personal files from nearly a decade ago, so I think something like this would increase in value for me over time.
pigtailgirl 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34544199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34544199
simonw 4y ago
I deeply regret the many projects from earlier in my career that I never thought to take screenshots of. And I'm mostly a backend developer!
thdc 4y ago
This is a lesson I learned too late. Consider extending this idea outside of digital work, to any online hobby. In my case, I think back to all the time I spent on MMOs (basically raised online) and wish I had taken screenshots or recordings of my time then; I have none and it makes me sad. Apply it to real life, too. You'll never know what little meaningful events you'll wish you had records of in the future.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Also, doing it in meatspace has practical benefits. How do these screws go back into this hardware? Oh look, here's a photo that shows the thing disassembled with each screw placed next to the hole it came from, which also shows which bits slot together - maybe I even took multiple pictures to show which part of the case came off first.
  - david422 4y ago
    I've been doing that with my house as well. Every year I end up trying to rediscover some mundane task like - how do I remove this darn window screen with these hidden latches. So I'm trying something new: I write up a google doc with some pictures. Then I make a QR code of the url and attach it. I've done it for several things: - how to put the air conditioners in the windows - documenting the water filtration system - documenting the septic system - documenting the propane fireplace - documenting the network wiring
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I’ve picked up a habit of photographing everything even mildly notable outside so when the topic comes up at some point, I’ve got useful photographs. Sometimes it’s years later and someone will bring up a building or street that’s not notable enough to have photos online and my photos are much better than what you get from street view.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    What are some interesting minor notable things you've documented?
magicbuzz 4y ago
Absolutely. When I do front-end work, I screenshot every visual change in the PR. Boss wants a look at the current work -> screenshot Users want to see a difference -> screenshot. But the most valuable it that it builds up a visual history of changes in my Screenshots dir.
- ty_2k 4y ago
  This is my favorite use case as well. There's nothing better than starting a pull request review on someone else's front-end work and seeing the changes they've made before looking at the code.
  - loa_in_ 4y ago
    How do you do this for UI elements that don't fit on screen?
GaggiX 4y ago
I on the other hand should take fewer screenshots, I have more than 136000 screenshots on my phone and it is not even a year old. Similar number with my PC.
- simlevesque 4y ago
  So, around 38 per day ?
  - GaggiX 4y ago
    136,000 not 13,600
- cjsawyer 4y ago
  Why? That’s hundreds per day.
  - GaggiX 4y ago
    Every time I see something remotely interesting, I get the tic to take a screenshot (I don't know if it's actually a tic or not, I can't think of a better term). if I consciously decide not to take a screenshot I have to suppress the action or else it is automatic for me.
- artdigital 4y ago
  I am similar so just recently started wiping them all. On Mac I use Hazel to auto-move old screenshots into the trash. On iPhone I use Gemini Photos to clear out screenshots that are just random screens or something I wanted to share to someone.
xpressvideoz 4y ago
I have been taking screenshots for years, but it developed into a hoarding OCD. And it is ruining my life. My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I don't even view those screenshots again in the future so the time spent on those screenshots is completely wasted. I don't recommend having a habit of taking screenshots to those that may be vulnerable to OCD.
- switchbak 4y ago
  I never got in this habit, and I guess I'm old enough to only become aware that it is a habit recently. I do take screenshots while debugging or if I want to show someone something curious, and I'll take those pretty aggressively just in case (the files are small, hard drives are cheap). But I feel no compulsion here. Where does the drive to take so many screenshots come from?
  - GaggiX 4y ago
    For me probably in thinking I found something interesting that I could share with my friends, but eventually it developed into taking screenshots for even the most remotely interesting stuff, which no one really cares about but me.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      I and many others can easily empathize if we look back at our phone camera libraries, full of mundane momentarily interesting images from our lives. But what screenshots trigger that capture itch? One thing I have (on my phone) are high score/achievement moments in games. Ironically, Threes game has its own internal hall of fame, and the UI is made up like a framed picture on a wall.
      - BlueTemplar 4y ago
        It's quite a common thing, Xfire went even further and introduced its Flashback feature 15 years ago : https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/82410-xfire-gets-video-capture-update-for-gamers https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/82410-xfire-gets-video-c... > The TiVo-like function allows users to go back and record footage five to ten seconds after it happened.
Waterluvian 4y ago
One of the most powerful things in the mid 00s was having this app that automatically uploaded any screenshot on my Mac and put a URL in my clipboard. This also combined with the feature of the Mac to screenshot a specific area of the screen. This was before the UX of sending images was trivial and the UX of this was so amazing that others asked me to help them set it up. Mind you this was high school and university so it was for what are now called memes as well as homework related stuff. So no real fear of uploading work secrets or whatnot. The other killer feature was turning on this ability to zoom in the whole screen with hot keys + mouse wheel. I used it CONSTANTLY. It was just a habit to zoom to the width of the actual website content, for example.
- lstamour 4y ago
  Pretty sure the app was Skitch. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/skitch-for-mac https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/skitch-for-mac I used to love it for that feature too. On Windows a similar app was Jing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(software) but the Skitch app could also really easily add text, and had a neat way of dragging and dropping the tab containing the filename to save a file to a particular location or send it somewhere that you rarely see today. It wasn’t intuitive but it was easy once you knew how, like dragging the file icon from the window title bar (a hidden feature of only some document-based macOS apps). Turning on zooming likely refers to https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210978 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210978 which was a feature added to Snow Leopard (maybe) where you could hold the control key and use the mouse wheel or Magic Mouse to zoom in.
- perryizgr8 4y ago
  > automatically uploaded any screenshot on my Mac and put a URL in my clipboard This is built into windows nowadays and it's just so helpful. I cannot believe macos doesn't do it natively. I always have to browse to the desktop and the use the image. It's just Ctrl V on windows.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    A URL to a web hosted copy you can share with others? For OSX you’ve always been able to screenshot right to clipboard.
s1mon 4y ago
I worked with someone who took a lot of screenshots and dumped them into powerpoints as a record of the work done on projects. It becomes a way of journalling or recording. Having that kind of record is really helpful, and I wish that I had the habit.
accrual 4y ago
Yes! I take screenshots on my personal machine whenever I feel like it would be interesting to look back on. I have about 12 years of screenshots from different machines. I can see the music I was listening to, the tabs I had open, my wallpaper and theme, the OS. I can see my digital workspace evolving and changing over time and I appreciate being able to do this.
jw1224 4y ago
Shout out to CleanShotX[1], top-quality software and now absolutely indispensable to me. [1] https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/
- karmelapple 4y ago
  The recent history additions have been very helpful, too. I really like this app.
neilv 4y ago
With most side-project software I wrote in the 90s, I definitely found that, nowadays, a screenshot would be more valuable to me than being able to run it. Some side-project screenshots I do have, I couldn't practically reproduce the conditions under which they were made, even when I can easily still run the code. I do need to be better about my professional nostalgia/portfolio. Even a couple years ago, when I wrote an internal-only iOS app that worked very nicely, and was sure to get screenshots and video, adding them to the company-wide "nostalgia folder" I maintained... in all the work I did for a smooth handoff when I left that startup, to make sure the company didn't effectively lose any data, I didn't think to ask about keeping some copies of less-sensitive nostalgia photos/videos for myself.
cloudmike 4y ago
When I started making a game [0] last year, first thing I did was write a little Unity script that takes a screenshot of the opening scene, counts current lines of code using CLOC [1] (for fun, not as a true measure of anything), and occasionally renders it all out to an image file. With that I'm able to create some pretty fun time lapses of progress. I've been doing this at an arbitrary milestone, whenever my Luau [2] LOC surpasses C++ by another factor. This post reminded me I'm overdue for another now that Luau > 3x C++ LOC. I find it rewarding to look back at my progress. I'll share in case it's interesting for you too [3]. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/ [1] https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc [2] https://luau-lang.org https://luau-lang.org [3] https://twitter.com/kineticpoet/status/1619508466212831232 https://twitter.com/kineticpoet/status/1619508466212831232
- Sainth 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing! Very interesting to see the development in the timelapse. Going to do this for my next Unity project.
- david422 4y ago
  Nice, love the time lapse gif!
- srcreigh 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing, Super cool. I wishlisted and downloaded the demo.
- bonestamp2 4y ago
  The time lapse on your twitter is great... really fun to see those simple shapes and environment get more detailed, better lighting, shading, etc. Thanks for sharing!
forgotmypw17 4y ago
Just record your entire session with OBS, set at 3fps. I can't count the number of times I've found it helpful to be able to check what I was doing X time units ago.
- dewey 4y ago
  That sounds like exactly what https://www.rewind.ai https://www.rewind.ai is doing.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Do you keep that forever? How often do you need something from a 1/3 second time slice, vs, say 1s or 5s?
  - forgotmypw17 4y ago
    No, I don't keep it forever. Even at 3fps plus audio, it adds up. I tried 1fps before, and it was not enough, interfaces move faster than that. 3fps is sufficient, but sometimes I boost it for more important things like when I am teaching. I usually review them and take a few snapshots before deleting. Some I keep longer.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  AMD and Nvidia Drivers can both be set up to record the X last minutes of the screen. I've found it very useful when logging bugs to be able to step back through my last few minutes to see the steps that led to the bug.
- tomatohs 4y ago
  We're building a startup based on this idea, though we find that the #1 use cases is catching unexpected bugs. Is that what you find as well, when recording with OBS? Check out http://replayable.io http://replayable.io.
darkteflon 4y ago
So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?
- danhak 4y ago
  I've had a lot of success using the pixelmatch library for image comparison / deduping https://github.com/mapbox/pixelmatch https://github.com/mapbox/pixelmatch
  - darkteflon 4y ago
    Thank you, that looks perfect. > “pixelmatch is around 150 lines of code, has no dependencies…”
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      * Except hundreds of megabytes of Node.js
- augusto-moura 4y ago
  I imagine that compressing the screenshots daily with something like gzip would do the magic for screenshots. A lot of the image would be repeated anyway, task bar, active windows, background, etc. A good question would be if you screenshot your screen twice in a very small time, how much of the binary would be the same? Are the tools and PNG reproducible enough to dedupe most of the second file on gzip?
- lttlrck 4y ago
  Recording the whole screen using H.264 or similar at a low frame rate might be easier.
- Ayesh 4y ago
  A very low tech approach would be to create a video from the screenshots, and let the video codecs do this for you. Av1/x265 are quite mature in detecting differences between frames.
aj7 4y ago
Screenshot->crop->Apple Notes is very standard for me. I try to remember to select and copy some appropriate text from the page to act as title text. Copying the url into the note completes it.
Aperocky 4y ago
> For example, my oldest files were made in Microsoft Word on an iMac G3 running Mac OS 9. I can open them in a modern word processor, and they look similar – but it’s not the same. Some of the fonts and graphics are missing, and I don’t know where I’d find replacements. > It’s even harder for an undocumented side project I abandoned years ago. Having the code isn’t the same as a working application. The author's solution to this is apparently screenshots, I have to respectfully disagree. For software, side project or not, it should probably come with dependency configurations (granted, in early 2000s this isn't as mature as it is today) and some tests. My side projects basically all have tests, these tests are vital for picking up years later and for validation while developing. For personal notes, I use this script which upon `$ diary` would create/open an entry for the current day in the appropriate folder with vim: https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman/blob/master/diaryman.sh https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman/blob/master/diaryman.sh. Text files will last forever, it has some basic flavoring with markdown, but that's it. The folder where this is indexed is without a doubt the most valuable data on my computer, and it stretches back years. I do occasionally take screenshots but never for reasons that author find screenshot to be useful for.
- whartung 4y ago
  > For software, side project or not, it should probably come with dependency configurations (granted, in early 2000s this isn't as mature as it is today) and some tests. These may or may not help. Things have certainly changed in the past several years, but if we have learned anything, the "infinite memory of the internet" is anything but. Dependencies vanish and die all the time. So, while you may have a list of dependencies, if you don't have those actual dependencies locally with you, you may be out of luck. Even if the actual project still exists, the older versions you depend on may not. I can't speak to others, but if you were to actively shelve a Java project, and were using Maven or relying on its infrastructure, I would clean out your local repository cache, rebuild and test the project, then snapshot the project directory and the repository cache. At least then you might have a solid chance of resuscitating the project later on if you needed too.
  - spockz 4y ago
jerieljan 4y ago
I've definitely learned to take more screenshots for over a year now and I'm glad I took the time to "optimize" my process: making use of tools like Syncthing to collect screenshots from my phone and laptops, automatically renaming and filing them in folders and aggressively compressing old screenshots with Hazel, and taking better screenshots overall with Shottr. Oh, and a few handy Shortcuts to stitch and grid screenshots. It's a thing I didn't expect to be a quality-of-life improvement, but it really did, whether it's to remind me of the little but important things that I've done and am glad to recall weeks after, or to provide helpful TODOs or visual documentation on things that I end up doing from time to time.
- ilteris 4y ago
  Is there any place that you explain your process thank you
  - jerieljan 4y ago
    Hm, your comment reminded me to note these down, so yeah, here ya go: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPtfgISc= https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPtfgISc=
press-any-key 4y ago
I use SnagIt to capture a screenshot with a single keystroke when I hit the print-screen button. I have configured SnagIt to automatically store .png file with a date/time stamp. Out of 100 screenshots, 99 will never be viewed, but that 1 out of 100 is valuable.
- b215826 4y ago
  > SnagIt [1] $62.99 for something that you could hack together in a few lines of (power)shell script? [1] https://www.techsmith.com/store/snagit https://www.techsmith.com/store/snagit
  - robjan 4y ago
    Greenshot is a FOSS alternative which achieves a similar thing
- Arainach 4y ago
  Win + PrintScreen does exactly this already?
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
I used to sent screenshots of chat conversations to my ex all the time because she was always "reinterpreting" the details of past conversations. Turns out this was a maladaptation to cope with her abusive behaviour and wildly untreated borderline personality disorder. So FYI, if you find yourself in the same situation, take a step back, reevaluate, and ask others around you for help.
digitalsushi 4y ago
i regularly right click a word i dont know, get the definition, and then screenshot the context with the web page, the word highlighted, the definition, and toss the fresh screenshot right into a vocab folder on the desktop
johnnyApplePRNG 4y ago
I made my first website on geocities and it kills me that I cannot for the life of me find a record of it any longer. It was a website that "sold" replica/counterfeit watches. I was enthralled with them as a child for some reason. I knew they were popular items on the fledgling internet so I created a webpage for them on geocities and setup an email address to contact if you would like to purchase one. I had lots of interested parties who wanted to buy the watches but unfortunately my parents would not front a 12 year old the cash required to purchase them in bulk from the shady internet supplier I had found. Probably a smart move on their part. Fun times! I ended up purchasing a few really high quality replicas when I visited China decades later as an adult. I miss the early internet.
- pabs3 4y ago
  Geocities was reasonably well archived, do you remember the URL? https://archive.org/web/geocities.php https://archive.org/web/geocities.php
  - darkwater 4y ago
    I'm in a similar situation, I even remember more or less how it was visually but for the life of me I cannot remember the URL or what nickname I could have used, I cannot find it by my 16yo me nickname I remember :( Edit: reading the page, it's a scrape from 2009. My page was from 1997-1998 and basically used only by me and my circle of friends, chances are it has been lost forever.
    - pabs3 4y ago
      archive.org geocities scrapes go back to 1996, so it is plausible it could have survived: https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=geocities.com&matchType=domain&limit=10 https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=geocities.com&mat... If you ever remember any of the details, the CDX API can probably help. https://github.com/internetarchive/wayback/blob/master/wayback-cdx-server/README.md https://github.com/internetarchive/wayback/blob/master/wayba...
  - dzhiurgis 4y ago
naet 4y ago
I made some art zines in an older version of MS Word that I saved, the source files for, but when I went to open and print them years later the formatting and images were completely destroyed even though Word is supposed to be backwards compatible. I thought the .doc file would be a good way to save it, since it was closest to the source and I could edit things later if I needed. I ended up having better luck when I could find the rendered PDFs or rasterized images instead. They were less editable, but far more stable for archiving and returning to after long periods of time.
cmod 4y ago
I'd add to this: Take screenshots, and consider compiling them into a book. [0] [0]: https://craigmod.com/journal/digital_physical/#book https://craigmod.com/journal/digital_physical/#book
kasperset 4y ago
I use TimeSnapper for taking screenshot of the active screen area every 5 seconds. It has helped me on some occasions for notes that I missed during the online meeting.
andreygrehov 4y ago
Here is a fun story about screenshots. All of us had that feeling: you are browsing the Internet and suddenly see something cool. You either forget to bookmark it or that cool thing is not cool enough to be amongst your bookmark items (which are clearly much cooler). Sometimes you may also think: "Whatever, I have my browser's history, I'll find it later if needed". Later, you want to show that cool website or app or whatever to your friend. You check your bookmarks, well, nothing there. You check your browser's history and can't find it - you don't even remember the website. Later, you realize that on top of evertyhing, you were using the Incognito mode and there is no way to find anything for that session. Well, when it comes to browsing history, there is a chance to look back and go through the visited websites (if you are lucky). However, what about web forms or something you were coding and then said "f### it, i don't need it", closed the file and then in a few days later: "damn, i should've saved that file".. So, I had millions of situations like that. At some point, I was like: "this shit can't go like that forever". And I found the solution. I installed a spyware on my own computer. The spyware would make screenshots either every Nth second or each time a user switches from one application to another. To activate the spyware's interface, you (as an evil hacker who has access to your victim's local computer) would have to setup a secret key combination (say Ctrl+A+I+P), followed by a password. The spyware interface allows you to see everything that was happening on the computer: list of loaded applications, screenshots (!), keys you typed, everything! This post gets so long, but the result was a pure success. I used the tool a shit ton of times to recall what I did in the pass. FAQ: Q: Wouldn't the screenshots take a lot of space on your hard drive? A: No. They were compressed. The quality was good enough to understand everything. -- Q: What about the data going to someone else's computer over the network, say, the creators of the spyware? A: This was a local spyware. No network traffic whatsoever. -- Q: Do you still use the tool? A: No. This was many, many years ago. I was a Windows user back then. I haven't seen similar tool since I switched to Mac computers.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Although I haven't tried it, rewind.ai does something similar with Macs (records searchable screenshots and audio)
- phendrenad2 4y ago
lostmsu 4y ago
I am actually pondering about making a service or an autonomous app out of a tool I made for myself, that records the screen, keystrokes, mouse, keyboard focus location, and additionally traces the gaze if you have suitable hardware (e.g. Tobii). The goal is to be able to make some sense of all that data with the current deep learning techniques (think Copilot on steroids). Although as a service it would be extremely expensive: video adds terabytes of storage every year, and will require even more expensive compute for deep learning. Probably a few thousand or even tens of thousands $ a year.
- Jaxkr 4y ago
  Have you seen https://www.rewind.ai/ https://www.rewind.ai/ ? It’s almost exactly what you’re describing.
  - lostmsu 4y ago
    I have not. From the changelog, the differences between my work and theirs are: - Mac only vs Windows only - They have already wired some AI stuff like speech recognition (trivial with Whisper these days, I was able to use it to generate synchronous lyrics ala karaoke to my home music collection in about 1 week of coding. Unlike video does not require much compute) - They have slick GUI and presumably reliable recording - as I did not decide to productize it yet, I only have 2 global hotkeys to start and stop. - I capture more data: keyboard + focus, gaze traces, and mouse traces. This will allow better behavioral models (they could and probably should have an option to do it too). I especially rely on gaze, as it is a very dense data channel. - I have functionality to replay user actions both to just view, and to actually replay them (this is where copilot-like AI will eventually be connected). It was funny to see the codename of my project in one of their screenshots as a label on a control.
ctxc 4y ago
I built something to take periodic screenshots of Electron apps while discarding duplicates. Sadly I never got around to building more Electron apps, so it's not feature complete (I intended it to have more options). But the basic periodic screenshotting mechanism works. I might continue if there's any interest :) https://github.com/CatalanCabbage/electron-vlog https://github.com/CatalanCabbage/electron-vlog
mgerb 4y ago
It saddens me that I don’t have many screenshots from when I was younger, even if it was just pictures of my desktop. Although I make an effort to take more screenshots these days, I made a simple tool to take screenshots on an interval. I wish I had done something like this 15 years ago. If anyone is interested: https://github.com/mgerb/mgcapture https://github.com/mgerb/mgcapture
oldstrangers 4y ago
Everyone doing any sort of creative work should maintain a portfolio (writer, developer, musician, painter, architect, interior designer, literally everyone). I keep recordings of websites I've done on YouTube and add them to my portfolio (http://zchry.org/ http://zchry.org/). It's kind of cathartic to me to be able to revisit things I've spent hundreds of hours on, especially long after they've run their course.
dirtyid 4y ago
Want an archival program that would take 25% size screen shots every X or seconds (or fraction of) and record low bitrate sound when computer active. Index to searchable text and have system up sample data later. Maybe black and white with very limited color info for recolouring as well. So many link rot content that's too hard or difficult to track down online vs being assured there's some fragment of local version that you know you've consumed in the past. Probably log a life times activity with a few dozen terabytes.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  For link rot, automatic website backups when making a bookmark seems to be a better idea ? P.S.: Shame of everyone involved that something like SingleFile is not a web standard yet.
bmitc 4y ago
Not everyone can take and take with them screenshots of their work though. The vast majority of my work is hidden behind company and other walls.
aaws11 4y ago
previous discussion: sept 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277
xkcd1963 4y ago
Don't use whatsapp or instagram, apps that prevent taking screenshots. Or jailbreak your phone.
albertzeyer 4y ago
I had a script once which generated a screenshot every minute or so. The idea was that I would then use some other machine learning supported scripts to extract some statistics. One motivation was that I needed to collect working time statistics, and I wanted to count the minutes that I had Eclipse open. I even wrote a DB to store PNG files more efficiently. It deduplicates blocks, and thus achieves much higher compression rates: https://github.com/albertz/png-db https://github.com/albertz/png-db The analytics were harder than I thought. I had OpenCV at hand, and tried using those SIFT features (if I remember correctly) (note, that was 12 years ago, before we had more powerful neural networks), and it took me lots of trial and error via a lot of ugly heuristics, and in the end I just tried to identify the Eclipse icon in the Mac Dock. But it worked more or less. And the scripts to analyze the screenshots: https://github.com/albertz/screenshooting https://github.com/albertz/screenshooting Then, I developed some scripts which would collect such information more directly, about the app in foreground, including the opened file or URL, etc. This is still running, with many years of data now. But I never really had any use of that data. Maybe someday I will extract some interesting statistics out of it. This script is here, with support for Linux and Mac: https://github.com/albertz/timecapture https://github.com/albertz/timecapture
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  I made something similar with "brotab", grabbing full text content of all open tabs of the browser (and other metadata) every so often and archiving it, so I can search it like a kind of extended history and correlate URLs by context.
nickjj 4y ago
Yep this is sound advice. I have dozens of screenshots of old websites I built from 1997-2002 and it's fun revisiting them once in a while. It's all sitting in a "_legacy" folder with 104 projects that I've copied from HD to HD over the years. On the other hand, I have a few old VB6 apps that I didn't release publicly that I wish I had screenshots of because I didn't think about screenshotting them at the time. Back then taking screenshots was more common I think. Having a "screenshots" section on your tool's website was pretty normal and expected. Especially since back then streaming video wasn't readily available. A screenshot was the only way to showcase what you've built visually. Also for websites you usually had a PSD file with the whole site's layout that you later sliced up into images when creating the markup, so at the very least you probably have that PSD sitting around.
dewey 4y ago
I take a lot of screenshots, even if it's just for reason as "oh I have to remember that". I automatically store them in a directory that's synced via Syncthing between my work laptop and home NAS. That way I have access to all of these from everywhere. Sometimes I just jump back to some point in time and scroll through them, it's very easy to get "stuck" after looking at old screenshots for 15 min. Old websites, old projects, screenshots from IRC. It's always fun and I feel like I get a lot of value out of that simple workflow.
smusamashah 4y ago
I will recommend using OneNote for putting down screenshots along with text description or whatever you want to write. It suits perfectly for this kind of usage and is as freeform as the screenshots. Write anywhere, put screenshots anywhere, even attach any other kind of files anywhere within the doc.
kledru 4y ago
While images might last longer than some other files in terms of compatibility, the most durable and flexible format is still plain text. So if what you want is to preserve your ideas, try writing.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
I’m afraid for when Apple prevents screenshots due to drm or enterprise policies. Shows a huge lack of trust.
Geloto 4y ago
I collected a lot, didn't find the time to organize it and also lost a lot. I'm now quite happy of not having too much.
bonestamp2 4y ago
Now that MacOS indexes text in your screenshots, it's also a lot easier to comb through all your screenshots when you're looking for something specific.
tomatohs 4y ago
It's always bugged me that software breaks so easily. Even with the full source code, it can be impossible to get something running again just months later. I've documented my entire work history with screenshots in my portfolio [1], which is sort of weird considering the heavy backend work put into it that isn't reflected. [1] http://jnnngs.com/ http://jnnngs.com/

urda 4y ago

I love screenshots. In many of my internal code reviews and changes I will include them to demonstrate or highlight changes. Take more screenshots! Let me see what you see!

_8j50 4y ago

I actually am in a position where I need to take a screenshot but haven't found any tool on linux that has the right UX like macos builtin screenshot or on windows, greenshot and lightshot. I want to press printscr or some shortcut and immediately screenshot an area of the screen or the whole screen and by default have it saved to a numerically incrementing files under a folder I configure and not have to close or interact with any popups. This is on Linux. Any recommendations?

doerinrw 4y ago
I think this is highly dependent on your distro (and comfort with the CLI but I'm taking that for granted on HN) but I found the gnome screenshot to be very simple, quick, and effective. Piping a hotkey to a CLI command is presumably easy, and after 5s of googling I found the guide below for Gnome. Not exactly fancy and I haven't used this specific tool recently enough to say whether it meets all your requirements exactly (e.g. you might need to press "Enter" once to close a popup), but I think a solution like this might fit the Linux ethos best! https://linux.die.net/man/1/gnome-screenshot https://linux.die.net/man/1/gnome-screenshot https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/proc_setting-key-shortcut/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/proc_setting...
- _8j50 4y ago
  Thanks, will check it out, my main problem with gnome-* is the package pulling in gnome deps into my "minimal" lxqt environment.
cwaffles 4y ago
I can recommend flameshot[0]. It has good editing tools built-in, low dependencies, and is ergonomic. [0] https://flameshot.org/ https://flameshot.org/
- _8j50 4y ago
  Thanks, from the demo gifs on that page, this is my favorite so far.
RheingoldRiver 4y ago
I use Sharex on Windows and I don't think there's any better tool, so I searched for "run sharex on linux" and there is indeed a guide - https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/issues/6531 https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/issues/6531 - maybe you can get it to work? I believe it can do all of the things you want. Certainly area capture, remembered area capture, fullscreen capture, all bound to different hotkeys. Mine saves with the name = the timestamp but you can probably config it to be an incrementing index. It's incredibly full-featured. I also have hotkeys for "capture current pixel's hex code" and "measure bounded box in pixels." When you take a capture you can also annotate it including showing labeled steps. After capture you can do one or more of: save locally (to one or more places), upload (to one or more hosts), copy to clipboard, etc. That includes pastebin if you have text saved to your clipboard so I use this for that also.
- kroltan 4y ago
  I can't recommend ShareX enough, it is the most well thought out, intuitive and comprehensive tool for handling screenshots. I really miss it on Linux, I'll try that guide.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Thanks, looks featureful. But I really need it very stable so running it in wine is a dealbreaker, since I already have a wine setup I have to fumble with a lot to get different windows executables to behave in certain ways.
mfkp 4y ago
I've been using https://screencloud.net/ https://screencloud.net/ for the past few years. Custom file naming rules, you can upload to your own FTP server, then it will automatically copy a link to the file. Works perfectly for sharing and archiving screenshots.
- sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
  It's best to just use a printer, makes it easy to review screenshots I've taken at night or in the loo
julianeon 4y ago
I use i3 and I think I pretty much had that at one time… Basically I bound a key combo to a script, and that script would call scrot (the app), screenshot, and save the picture to date_plus_random_4_digit_number.png. I think I wrote that script in Ruby and put it in .local/bin. But you could write it in another language too.
namibj 4y ago
If you can deal with it being a datetime name, a script that generates the filename and calls `maim` should be really easy, just to be hooked up to the key combination through the desktop environment/window manager. Make two to distinguish between "save entire screen" and "let me drag a selection that it will save".

thejarren 4y ago

I take screenshots all the time, and sync them to iCloud so I can access them immediately on my phone/iPad. I also back up previous years of screenshots, I think I have back to 2015 right now. But one thing that I've been keeping my eye on as well (and used for a month) is https://www.rewind.ai/ https://www.rewind.ai/ which records everything that happens on your M1/M2 mac screen and is immediately searchable. Just like Alex says here "They’re not as good as having the original, working thing – but they’re much better than nothing. I can dip in quickly and easily, and instantly be reminded of the creativity of my past self." And I think arguably Rewind solves for that completely (with the added cost of increased storage space and less specific capturing/resolution). This isn't a pitch for their product, it's just a natural progression to screenshots/capture that I believe is relevant here.

thejarren 4y ago
As an added note, I stopped using Rewind because of the "steep" monthly cost ($20 a month), and the fact that I'd only want to use it as a backup to use long term. Upon reflection, $240 a year to have completely uncut video of my computer screen instantly searchable forever is a very valuable offering. Not to mention the fact that the file size is fairly small compared to large 4k videos. If it were built into macOS I'd be blown away and use it forever, still on the fence about it.
- benatkin 4y ago
  It's a niche product it seems. I have zero interest in it.
  - stavros 4y ago
    I mean, I have zero interest in Instagram, but that doesn't make it a niche product.
  - thejarren 4y ago
    That makes sense. This archive tool is even more out there because it's not a direct link or file of the content, but just a capture of what the content would be. My work is mostly UI/UX and design related, so the capture is actually pretty valuable. I'm a bit of a digital packrat, and sometimes like to review personal files from nearly a decade ago, so I think something like this would increase in value for me over time.

pigtailgirl 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34544199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34544199

simonw 4y ago

I deeply regret the many projects from earlier in my career that I never thought to take screenshots of. And I'm mostly a backend developer!

thdc 4y ago

This is a lesson I learned too late. Consider extending this idea outside of digital work, to any online hobby. In my case, I think back to all the time I spent on MMOs (basically raised online) and wish I had taken screenshots or recordings of my time then; I have none and it makes me sad. Apply it to real life, too. You'll never know what little meaningful events you'll wish you had records of in the future.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Also, doing it in meatspace has practical benefits. How do these screws go back into this hardware? Oh look, here's a photo that shows the thing disassembled with each screw placed next to the hole it came from, which also shows which bits slot together - maybe I even took multiple pictures to show which part of the case came off first.
- david422 4y ago
  I've been doing that with my house as well. Every year I end up trying to rediscover some mundane task like - how do I remove this darn window screen with these hidden latches. So I'm trying something new: I write up a google doc with some pictures. Then I make a QR code of the url and attach it. I've done it for several things: - how to put the air conditioners in the windows - documenting the water filtration system - documenting the septic system - documenting the propane fireplace - documenting the network wiring
Gigachad 4y ago
I’ve picked up a habit of photographing everything even mildly notable outside so when the topic comes up at some point, I’ve got useful photographs. Sometimes it’s years later and someone will bring up a building or street that’s not notable enough to have photos online and my photos are much better than what you get from street view.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  What are some interesting minor notable things you've documented?

magicbuzz 4y ago

Absolutely. When I do front-end work, I screenshot every visual change in the PR. Boss wants a look at the current work -> screenshot Users want to see a difference -> screenshot. But the most valuable it that it builds up a visual history of changes in my Screenshots dir.

ty_2k 4y ago
This is my favorite use case as well. There's nothing better than starting a pull request review on someone else's front-end work and seeing the changes they've made before looking at the code.
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  How do you do this for UI elements that don't fit on screen?

GaggiX 4y ago

I on the other hand should take fewer screenshots, I have more than 136000 screenshots on my phone and it is not even a year old. Similar number with my PC.

simlevesque 4y ago
So, around 38 per day ?
- GaggiX 4y ago
  136,000 not 13,600
cjsawyer 4y ago
Why? That’s hundreds per day.
- GaggiX 4y ago
  Every time I see something remotely interesting, I get the tic to take a screenshot (I don't know if it's actually a tic or not, I can't think of a better term). if I consciously decide not to take a screenshot I have to suppress the action or else it is automatic for me.
artdigital 4y ago
I am similar so just recently started wiping them all. On Mac I use Hazel to auto-move old screenshots into the trash. On iPhone I use Gemini Photos to clear out screenshots that are just random screens or something I wanted to share to someone.

xpressvideoz 4y ago

I have been taking screenshots for years, but it developed into a hoarding OCD. And it is ruining my life. My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I don't even view those screenshots again in the future so the time spent on those screenshots is completely wasted. I don't recommend having a habit of taking screenshots to those that may be vulnerable to OCD.

switchbak 4y ago
I never got in this habit, and I guess I'm old enough to only become aware that it is a habit recently. I do take screenshots while debugging or if I want to show someone something curious, and I'll take those pretty aggressively just in case (the files are small, hard drives are cheap). But I feel no compulsion here. Where does the drive to take so many screenshots come from?
- GaggiX 4y ago
  For me probably in thinking I found something interesting that I could share with my friends, but eventually it developed into taking screenshots for even the most remotely interesting stuff, which no one really cares about but me.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    I and many others can easily empathize if we look back at our phone camera libraries, full of mundane momentarily interesting images from our lives. But what screenshots trigger that capture itch? One thing I have (on my phone) are high score/achievement moments in games. Ironically, Threes game has its own internal hall of fame, and the UI is made up like a framed picture on a wall.
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      It's quite a common thing, Xfire went even further and introduced its Flashback feature 15 years ago : https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/82410-xfire-gets-video-capture-update-for-gamers https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/82410-xfire-gets-video-c... > The TiVo-like function allows users to go back and record footage five to ten seconds after it happened.

Waterluvian 4y ago

One of the most powerful things in the mid 00s was having this app that automatically uploaded any screenshot on my Mac and put a URL in my clipboard. This also combined with the feature of the Mac to screenshot a specific area of the screen. This was before the UX of sending images was trivial and the UX of this was so amazing that others asked me to help them set it up. Mind you this was high school and university so it was for what are now called memes as well as homework related stuff. So no real fear of uploading work secrets or whatnot. The other killer feature was turning on this ability to zoom in the whole screen with hot keys + mouse wheel. I used it CONSTANTLY. It was just a habit to zoom to the width of the actual website content, for example.

lstamour 4y ago
Pretty sure the app was Skitch. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/skitch-for-mac https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/skitch-for-mac I used to love it for that feature too. On Windows a similar app was Jing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(software) but the Skitch app could also really easily add text, and had a neat way of dragging and dropping the tab containing the filename to save a file to a particular location or send it somewhere that you rarely see today. It wasn’t intuitive but it was easy once you knew how, like dragging the file icon from the window title bar (a hidden feature of only some document-based macOS apps). Turning on zooming likely refers to https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210978 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210978 which was a feature added to Snow Leopard (maybe) where you could hold the control key and use the mouse wheel or Magic Mouse to zoom in.
perryizgr8 4y ago
> automatically uploaded any screenshot on my Mac and put a URL in my clipboard This is built into windows nowadays and it's just so helpful. I cannot believe macos doesn't do it natively. I always have to browse to the desktop and the use the image. It's just Ctrl V on windows.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  A URL to a web hosted copy you can share with others? For OSX you’ve always been able to screenshot right to clipboard.

s1mon 4y ago

I worked with someone who took a lot of screenshots and dumped them into powerpoints as a record of the work done on projects. It becomes a way of journalling or recording. Having that kind of record is really helpful, and I wish that I had the habit.

accrual 4y ago

Yes! I take screenshots on my personal machine whenever I feel like it would be interesting to look back on. I have about 12 years of screenshots from different machines. I can see the music I was listening to, the tabs I had open, my wallpaper and theme, the OS. I can see my digital workspace evolving and changing over time and I appreciate being able to do this.

jw1224 4y ago

Shout out to CleanShotX[1], top-quality software and now absolutely indispensable to me. [1] https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/

karmelapple 4y ago
The recent history additions have been very helpful, too. I really like this app.

neilv 4y ago

With most side-project software I wrote in the 90s, I definitely found that, nowadays, a screenshot would be more valuable to me than being able to run it. Some side-project screenshots I do have, I couldn't practically reproduce the conditions under which they were made, even when I can easily still run the code. I do need to be better about my professional nostalgia/portfolio. Even a couple years ago, when I wrote an internal-only iOS app that worked very nicely, and was sure to get screenshots and video, adding them to the company-wide "nostalgia folder" I maintained... in all the work I did for a smooth handoff when I left that startup, to make sure the company didn't effectively lose any data, I didn't think to ask about keeping some copies of less-sensitive nostalgia photos/videos for myself.

cloudmike 4y ago

When I started making a game [0] last year, first thing I did was write a little Unity script that takes a screenshot of the opening scene, counts current lines of code using CLOC [1] (for fun, not as a true measure of anything), and occasionally renders it all out to an image file. With that I'm able to create some pretty fun time lapses of progress. I've been doing this at an arbitrary milestone, whenever my Luau [2] LOC surpasses C++ by another factor. This post reminded me I'm overdue for another now that Luau > 3x C++ LOC. I find it rewarding to look back at my progress. I'll share in case it's interesting for you too [3]. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/ [1] https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc [2] https://luau-lang.org https://luau-lang.org [3] https://twitter.com/kineticpoet/status/1619508466212831232 https://twitter.com/kineticpoet/status/1619508466212831232

Sainth 4y ago
Thanks for sharing! Very interesting to see the development in the timelapse. Going to do this for my next Unity project.
david422 4y ago
Nice, love the time lapse gif!
srcreigh 4y ago
Thanks for sharing, Super cool. I wishlisted and downloaded the demo.
bonestamp2 4y ago
The time lapse on your twitter is great... really fun to see those simple shapes and environment get more detailed, better lighting, shading, etc. Thanks for sharing!

forgotmypw17 4y ago

Just record your entire session with OBS, set at 3fps. I can't count the number of times I've found it helpful to be able to check what I was doing X time units ago.

dewey 4y ago
That sounds like exactly what https://www.rewind.ai https://www.rewind.ai is doing.
hgsgm 4y ago
Do you keep that forever? How often do you need something from a 1/3 second time slice, vs, say 1s or 5s?
- forgotmypw17 4y ago
  No, I don't keep it forever. Even at 3fps plus audio, it adds up. I tried 1fps before, and it was not enough, interfaces move faster than that. 3fps is sufficient, but sometimes I boost it for more important things like when I am teaching. I usually review them and take a few snapshots before deleting. Some I keep longer.
jay_kyburz 4y ago
AMD and Nvidia Drivers can both be set up to record the X last minutes of the screen. I've found it very useful when logging bugs to be able to step back through my last few minutes to see the steps that led to the bug.
tomatohs 4y ago
We're building a startup based on this idea, though we find that the #1 use cases is catching unexpected bugs. Is that what you find as well, when recording with OBS? Check out http://replayable.io http://replayable.io.

darkteflon 4y ago

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

danhak 4y ago
I've had a lot of success using the pixelmatch library for image comparison / deduping https://github.com/mapbox/pixelmatch https://github.com/mapbox/pixelmatch
- darkteflon 4y ago
  Thank you, that looks perfect. > “pixelmatch is around 150 lines of code, has no dependencies…”
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    * Except hundreds of megabytes of Node.js
augusto-moura 4y ago
I imagine that compressing the screenshots daily with something like gzip would do the magic for screenshots. A lot of the image would be repeated anyway, task bar, active windows, background, etc. A good question would be if you screenshot your screen twice in a very small time, how much of the binary would be the same? Are the tools and PNG reproducible enough to dedupe most of the second file on gzip?
lttlrck 4y ago
Recording the whole screen using H.264 or similar at a low frame rate might be easier.
Ayesh 4y ago
A very low tech approach would be to create a video from the screenshots, and let the video codecs do this for you. Av1/x265 are quite mature in detecting differences between frames.

aj7 4y ago

Screenshot->crop->Apple Notes is very standard for me. I try to remember to select and copy some appropriate text from the page to act as title text. Copying the url into the note completes it.

Aperocky 4y ago

> For example, my oldest files were made in Microsoft Word on an iMac G3 running Mac OS 9. I can open them in a modern word processor, and they look similar – but it’s not the same. Some of the fonts and graphics are missing, and I don’t know where I’d find replacements. > It’s even harder for an undocumented side project I abandoned years ago. Having the code isn’t the same as a working application. The author's solution to this is apparently screenshots, I have to respectfully disagree. For software, side project or not, it should probably come with dependency configurations (granted, in early 2000s this isn't as mature as it is today) and some tests. My side projects basically all have tests, these tests are vital for picking up years later and for validation while developing. For personal notes, I use this script which upon `$ diary` would create/open an entry for the current day in the appropriate folder with vim: https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman/blob/master/diaryman.sh https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman/blob/master/diaryman.sh. Text files will last forever, it has some basic flavoring with markdown, but that's it. The folder where this is indexed is without a doubt the most valuable data on my computer, and it stretches back years. I do occasionally take screenshots but never for reasons that author find screenshot to be useful for.

whartung 4y ago
> For software, side project or not, it should probably come with dependency configurations (granted, in early 2000s this isn't as mature as it is today) and some tests. These may or may not help. Things have certainly changed in the past several years, but if we have learned anything, the "infinite memory of the internet" is anything but. Dependencies vanish and die all the time. So, while you may have a list of dependencies, if you don't have those actual dependencies locally with you, you may be out of luck. Even if the actual project still exists, the older versions you depend on may not. I can't speak to others, but if you were to actively shelve a Java project, and were using Maven or relying on its infrastructure, I would clean out your local repository cache, rebuild and test the project, then snapshot the project directory and the repository cache. At least then you might have a solid chance of resuscitating the project later on if you needed too.
- spockz 4y ago

jerieljan 4y ago

I've definitely learned to take more screenshots for over a year now and I'm glad I took the time to "optimize" my process: making use of tools like Syncthing to collect screenshots from my phone and laptops, automatically renaming and filing them in folders and aggressively compressing old screenshots with Hazel, and taking better screenshots overall with Shottr. Oh, and a few handy Shortcuts to stitch and grid screenshots. It's a thing I didn't expect to be a quality-of-life improvement, but it really did, whether it's to remind me of the little but important things that I've done and am glad to recall weeks after, or to provide helpful TODOs or visual documentation on things that I end up doing from time to time.

ilteris 4y ago
Is there any place that you explain your process thank you
- jerieljan 4y ago
  Hm, your comment reminded me to note these down, so yeah, here ya go: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPtfgISc= https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPtfgISc=

press-any-key 4y ago

I use SnagIt to capture a screenshot with a single keystroke when I hit the print-screen button. I have configured SnagIt to automatically store .png file with a date/time stamp. Out of 100 screenshots, 99 will never be viewed, but that 1 out of 100 is valuable.

b215826 4y ago
> SnagIt [1] $62.99 for something that you could hack together in a few lines of (power)shell script? [1] https://www.techsmith.com/store/snagit https://www.techsmith.com/store/snagit
- robjan 4y ago
  Greenshot is a FOSS alternative which achieves a similar thing
Arainach 4y ago
Win + PrintScreen does exactly this already?

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

I used to sent screenshots of chat conversations to my ex all the time because she was always "reinterpreting" the details of past conversations. Turns out this was a maladaptation to cope with her abusive behaviour and wildly untreated borderline personality disorder. So FYI, if you find yourself in the same situation, take a step back, reevaluate, and ask others around you for help.

digitalsushi 4y ago

i regularly right click a word i dont know, get the definition, and then screenshot the context with the web page, the word highlighted, the definition, and toss the fresh screenshot right into a vocab folder on the desktop

johnnyApplePRNG 4y ago

I made my first website on geocities and it kills me that I cannot for the life of me find a record of it any longer. It was a website that "sold" replica/counterfeit watches. I was enthralled with them as a child for some reason. I knew they were popular items on the fledgling internet so I created a webpage for them on geocities and setup an email address to contact if you would like to purchase one. I had lots of interested parties who wanted to buy the watches but unfortunately my parents would not front a 12 year old the cash required to purchase them in bulk from the shady internet supplier I had found. Probably a smart move on their part. Fun times! I ended up purchasing a few really high quality replicas when I visited China decades later as an adult. I miss the early internet.

pabs3 4y ago
Geocities was reasonably well archived, do you remember the URL? https://archive.org/web/geocities.php https://archive.org/web/geocities.php
- darkwater 4y ago
  I'm in a similar situation, I even remember more or less how it was visually but for the life of me I cannot remember the URL or what nickname I could have used, I cannot find it by my 16yo me nickname I remember :( Edit: reading the page, it's a scrape from 2009. My page was from 1997-1998 and basically used only by me and my circle of friends, chances are it has been lost forever.
  - pabs3 4y ago
    archive.org geocities scrapes go back to 1996, so it is plausible it could have survived: https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=geocities.com&matchType=domain&limit=10 https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=geocities.com&mat... If you ever remember any of the details, the CDX API can probably help. https://github.com/internetarchive/wayback/blob/master/wayback-cdx-server/README.md https://github.com/internetarchive/wayback/blob/master/wayba...
- dzhiurgis 4y ago

naet 4y ago

I made some art zines in an older version of MS Word that I saved, the source files for, but when I went to open and print them years later the formatting and images were completely destroyed even though Word is supposed to be backwards compatible. I thought the .doc file would be a good way to save it, since it was closest to the source and I could edit things later if I needed. I ended up having better luck when I could find the rendered PDFs or rasterized images instead. They were less editable, but far more stable for archiving and returning to after long periods of time.

cmod 4y ago

I'd add to this: Take screenshots, and consider compiling them into a book. [0] [0]: https://craigmod.com/journal/digital_physical/#book https://craigmod.com/journal/digital_physical/#book

kasperset 4y ago

I use TimeSnapper for taking screenshot of the active screen area every 5 seconds. It has helped me on some occasions for notes that I missed during the online meeting.

andreygrehov 4y ago

Here is a fun story about screenshots. All of us had that feeling: you are browsing the Internet and suddenly see something cool. You either forget to bookmark it or that cool thing is not cool enough to be amongst your bookmark items (which are clearly much cooler). Sometimes you may also think: "Whatever, I have my browser's history, I'll find it later if needed". Later, you want to show that cool website or app or whatever to your friend. You check your bookmarks, well, nothing there. You check your browser's history and can't find it - you don't even remember the website. Later, you realize that on top of evertyhing, you were using the Incognito mode and there is no way to find anything for that session. Well, when it comes to browsing history, there is a chance to look back and go through the visited websites (if you are lucky). However, what about web forms or something you were coding and then said "f### it, i don't need it", closed the file and then in a few days later: "damn, i should've saved that file".. So, I had millions of situations like that. At some point, I was like: "this shit can't go like that forever". And I found the solution. I installed a spyware on my own computer. The spyware would make screenshots either every Nth second or each time a user switches from one application to another. To activate the spyware's interface, you (as an evil hacker who has access to your victim's local computer) would have to setup a secret key combination (say Ctrl+A+I+P), followed by a password. The spyware interface allows you to see everything that was happening on the computer: list of loaded applications, screenshots (!), keys you typed, everything! This post gets so long, but the result was a pure success. I used the tool a shit ton of times to recall what I did in the pass. FAQ: Q: Wouldn't the screenshots take a lot of space on your hard drive? A: No. They were compressed. The quality was good enough to understand everything. -- Q: What about the data going to someone else's computer over the network, say, the creators of the spyware? A: This was a local spyware. No network traffic whatsoever. -- Q: Do you still use the tool? A: No. This was many, many years ago. I was a Windows user back then. I haven't seen similar tool since I switched to Mac computers.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
Although I haven't tried it, rewind.ai does something similar with Macs (records searchable screenshots and audio)
phendrenad2 4y ago

lostmsu 4y ago

I am actually pondering about making a service or an autonomous app out of a tool I made for myself, that records the screen, keystrokes, mouse, keyboard focus location, and additionally traces the gaze if you have suitable hardware (e.g. Tobii). The goal is to be able to make some sense of all that data with the current deep learning techniques (think Copilot on steroids). Although as a service it would be extremely expensive: video adds terabytes of storage every year, and will require even more expensive compute for deep learning. Probably a few thousand or even tens of thousands $ a year.

Jaxkr 4y ago
Have you seen https://www.rewind.ai/ https://www.rewind.ai/ ? It’s almost exactly what you’re describing.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  I have not. From the changelog, the differences between my work and theirs are: - Mac only vs Windows only - They have already wired some AI stuff like speech recognition (trivial with Whisper these days, I was able to use it to generate synchronous lyrics ala karaoke to my home music collection in about 1 week of coding. Unlike video does not require much compute) - They have slick GUI and presumably reliable recording - as I did not decide to productize it yet, I only have 2 global hotkeys to start and stop. - I capture more data: keyboard + focus, gaze traces, and mouse traces. This will allow better behavioral models (they could and probably should have an option to do it too). I especially rely on gaze, as it is a very dense data channel. - I have functionality to replay user actions both to just view, and to actually replay them (this is where copilot-like AI will eventually be connected). It was funny to see the codename of my project in one of their screenshots as a label on a control.

ctxc 4y ago

I built something to take periodic screenshots of Electron apps while discarding duplicates. Sadly I never got around to building more Electron apps, so it's not feature complete (I intended it to have more options). But the basic periodic screenshotting mechanism works. I might continue if there's any interest :) https://github.com/CatalanCabbage/electron-vlog https://github.com/CatalanCabbage/electron-vlog

mgerb 4y ago

It saddens me that I don’t have many screenshots from when I was younger, even if it was just pictures of my desktop. Although I make an effort to take more screenshots these days, I made a simple tool to take screenshots on an interval. I wish I had done something like this 15 years ago. If anyone is interested: https://github.com/mgerb/mgcapture https://github.com/mgerb/mgcapture

oldstrangers 4y ago

Everyone doing any sort of creative work should maintain a portfolio (writer, developer, musician, painter, architect, interior designer, literally everyone). I keep recordings of websites I've done on YouTube and add them to my portfolio (http://zchry.org/ http://zchry.org/). It's kind of cathartic to me to be able to revisit things I've spent hundreds of hours on, especially long after they've run their course.

dirtyid 4y ago

Want an archival program that would take 25% size screen shots every X or seconds (or fraction of) and record low bitrate sound when computer active. Index to searchable text and have system up sample data later. Maybe black and white with very limited color info for recolouring as well. So many link rot content that's too hard or difficult to track down online vs being assured there's some fragment of local version that you know you've consumed in the past. Probably log a life times activity with a few dozen terabytes.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
For link rot, automatic website backups when making a bookmark seems to be a better idea ? P.S.: Shame of everyone involved that something like SingleFile is not a web standard yet.

bmitc 4y ago

Not everyone can take and take with them screenshots of their work though. The vast majority of my work is hidden behind company and other walls.

aaws11 4y ago

previous discussion: sept 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277

xkcd1963 4y ago

Don't use whatsapp or instagram, apps that prevent taking screenshots. Or jailbreak your phone.

albertzeyer 4y ago

I had a script once which generated a screenshot every minute or so. The idea was that I would then use some other machine learning supported scripts to extract some statistics. One motivation was that I needed to collect working time statistics, and I wanted to count the minutes that I had Eclipse open. I even wrote a DB to store PNG files more efficiently. It deduplicates blocks, and thus achieves much higher compression rates: https://github.com/albertz/png-db https://github.com/albertz/png-db The analytics were harder than I thought. I had OpenCV at hand, and tried using those SIFT features (if I remember correctly) (note, that was 12 years ago, before we had more powerful neural networks), and it took me lots of trial and error via a lot of ugly heuristics, and in the end I just tried to identify the Eclipse icon in the Mac Dock. But it worked more or less. And the scripts to analyze the screenshots: https://github.com/albertz/screenshooting https://github.com/albertz/screenshooting Then, I developed some scripts which would collect such information more directly, about the app in foreground, including the opened file or URL, etc. This is still running, with many years of data now. But I never really had any use of that data. Maybe someday I will extract some interesting statistics out of it. This script is here, with support for Linux and Mac: https://github.com/albertz/timecapture https://github.com/albertz/timecapture

loa_in_ 4y ago
I made something similar with "brotab", grabbing full text content of all open tabs of the browser (and other metadata) every so often and archiving it, so I can search it like a kind of extended history and correlate URLs by context.

nickjj 4y ago

Yep this is sound advice. I have dozens of screenshots of old websites I built from 1997-2002 and it's fun revisiting them once in a while. It's all sitting in a "_legacy" folder with 104 projects that I've copied from HD to HD over the years. On the other hand, I have a few old VB6 apps that I didn't release publicly that I wish I had screenshots of because I didn't think about screenshotting them at the time. Back then taking screenshots was more common I think. Having a "screenshots" section on your tool's website was pretty normal and expected. Especially since back then streaming video wasn't readily available. A screenshot was the only way to showcase what you've built visually. Also for websites you usually had a PSD file with the whole site's layout that you later sliced up into images when creating the markup, so at the very least you probably have that PSD sitting around.

dewey 4y ago

I take a lot of screenshots, even if it's just for reason as "oh I have to remember that". I automatically store them in a directory that's synced via Syncthing between my work laptop and home NAS. That way I have access to all of these from everywhere. Sometimes I just jump back to some point in time and scroll through them, it's very easy to get "stuck" after looking at old screenshots for 15 min. Old websites, old projects, screenshots from IRC. It's always fun and I feel like I get a lot of value out of that simple workflow.

smusamashah 4y ago

I will recommend using OneNote for putting down screenshots along with text description or whatever you want to write. It suits perfectly for this kind of usage and is as freeform as the screenshots. Write anywhere, put screenshots anywhere, even attach any other kind of files anywhere within the doc.

kledru 4y ago

While images might last longer than some other files in terms of compatibility, the most durable and flexible format is still plain text. So if what you want is to preserve your ideas, try writing.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

I’m afraid for when Apple prevents screenshots due to drm or enterprise policies. Shows a huge lack of trust.

Geloto 4y ago

I collected a lot, didn't find the time to organize it and also lost a lot. I'm now quite happy of not having too much.

bonestamp2 4y ago

Now that MacOS indexes text in your screenshots, it's also a lot easier to comb through all your screenshots when you're looking for something specific.

tomatohs 4y ago

It's always bugged me that software breaks so easily. Even with the full source code, it can be impossible to get something running again just months later. I've documented my entire work history with screenshots in my portfolio [1], which is sort of weird considering the heavy backend work put into it that isn't reflected. [1] http://jnnngs.com/ http://jnnngs.com/