Latchshot

A lightweight yet intelligent window-aware screenshot tool for Wayland. Latchshot freezes the current desktop, snaps to the window under the pointer, and falls back to a freely drawn region when you drag.

Demo

Requirements

Latchshot targets compositors that expose the Wayland protocols needed by its custom overlay. The compositor must support:

• wlr-layer-shell-unstable-v1 (zwlr_layer_shell_v1)
• viewporter (wp_viewporter)
• At least one supported capture path:
  • ext-image-copy-capture-v1 together with an output source from ext-image-capture-source-v1
  • wlr-screencopy-unstable-v1, together with xdg-output-unstable-v1

Compositor support

Compositor	Status	Selection support
Niri	Supported	Window snapping and free-form regions
Sway	Supported	Window snapping and free-form regions
Hyprland	Supported	Window snapping and free-form regions
Mango	Supported	Window snapping and free-form regions
Other compatible Wayland compositors	Best effort	Free-form regions only
KDE Plasma	Intentionally unsupported	—
GNOME	Intentionally unsupported	—

The generic backend is selected automatically for unknown compositors.

KDE Plasma and GNOME remain intentionally out of scope because Latchshot targets this protocol stack rather than portal- or desktop-shell-specific screenshot flows.

Copying to clipboard (the default destiniation) also requires wl-copy from wl-clipboard.

Native window capture

Clicking a highlighted window uses native toplevel capture when available, preserving compositor-provided transparency such as rounded corners. Latchshot uses Wayland's ext-image-copy-capture-v1 with foreign-toplevel identifiers, or Niri's ScreenshotWindow IPC. Niri may also copy the intermediate image to the clipboard.

If native capture is unavailable or fails, Latchshot crops the frozen desktop frame; pass --prefer-crop to enforce cropping even when the protocol is supported.

The overlay remains rectangular because Wayland does not expose compositor corner masks. Other projects, like HyprCapture, use compositor-specific hacks to capture rounded corners and introduced lots of complexity. I intentionally avoids this path.

Installation

From source

With Cargo:

cargo install latchshot

Cargo features

All compositor integrations are enabled by default. Use --no-default-features and --features to select which ones to include:

Feature	Capability
niri	Niri IPC scene discovery
niri-capture	Native window screenshots through Niri's ScreenshotWindow IPC; enables niri
sway	Sway IPC window discovery
hyprland	Hyprland IPC window discovery
mango	Mango IPC window discovery

For example, include Niri and its native capture path without other compositor integrations:

latchshot = { version = "*", default-features = false, features = ["niri", "niri-capture"] }

The generic Wayland backend, standard Wayland capture, and free-form region selection are always available.

Nix

Run directly:

nix run github:so1ve/latchshot

With a Nix flake, add Latchshot to the inputs:

inputs.latchshot.url = "github:so1ve/latchshot";

Then add the package to a NixOS configuration:

{ inputs, pkgs, ... }:

{
  environment.systemPackages = [
    inputs.latchshot.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default
  ];
}

Alternatively, use the overlay to make pkgs.latchshot available:

{ inputs, pkgs, ... }:

{
  nixpkgs.overlays = [
    inputs.latchshot.overlays.default
  ];

  environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.latchshot
  ];
}

Cachix

Use the project cache for prebuilt Nix artifacts when available:

nix.settings = {
  extra-substituters = [ "https://so1ve.cachix.org" ];
  extra-trusted-public-keys = [
    "so1ve.cachix.org-1:51jcW4FkJhiLcqPsiUx3nglRP469les8F9zjFxio1nw="
  ];
};

Usage

Run Latchshot with no destination to copy the selected screenshot to the clipboard:

latchshot

During selection:

• Move the pointer to highlight the window underneath it.
• Left-click a highlighted window to capture it.
• Left-drag to select an arbitrary region.
• Press F to capture the output under the pointer.
• Press Esc or right-click to cancel.

Save directly to a file:

latchshot --output ~/Pictures/screenshot.png

Write PNG data to standard output:

latchshot --stdout > screenshot.png

Destinations can be combined. For example, this saves the screenshot to a file, streams it to standard output, and copies it to the clipboard:

latchshot --output ~/Pictures/screenshot.png --stdout --clipboard > screenshot-copy.png

To disable animation:

latchshot --no-animation

To disable desktop notifications:

latchshot --no-notify

To always crop clicked windows from the frozen desktop frame instead of using native window capture:

latchshot --prefer-crop

Print the discovered scene as JSON for diagnostics:

latchshot --windows

Run latchshot --help for all options. Set RUST_LOG=latchshot=debug for additional diagnostics.

Workflow Examples

Annotate with Satty, save the result as a timestamped file under ~/Pictures, and play the desktop's screenshot sound. Press Enter in Satty when finished:

file="$HOME/Pictures/latchshot-$(date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S').png"; latchshot --stdout | satty --filename - --output-filename "$file" --actions-on-enter=save-to-file,exit; test -s "$file" && canberra-gtk-play --id=screen-capture

The equivalent workflow with Swappy writes the annotated image when Swappy exits:

file="$HOME/Pictures/latchshot-$(date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S').png"; latchshot --stdout | swappy --file - --output-file "$file"; test -s "$file" && canberra-gtk-play --id=screen-capture

Library Usage

Latchshot can also be used as a Rust library. See the API documentation on docs.rs for details.

AI Usage Disclosure

GPT was used to generate compositor adapters for Hyprland, Sway and MangoWM, which I do not use. Doc comments and tests are generated under my guidance.

License

MIT. Made with ♥️ by Ray.