Screenshot (Print Screen) is not working in Linux Mint 14

When I finished my work on getting my wi-fi card up and running in my brand new installation of Linux Mint 14, I thought of putting down in this article. In the process, I tried to take screenshot for few windows. To my surprise nothing happened when I pressed key. I looked into Google for existence of any such know issue and yes it was already there since Linux Mint 13. I found a discussion on Linux Mint forums. After reading the posts, it turned out that key press was taking the screenshots and saving them to Pictures directory in user area. Wow!

Wait! I could not find even a single screenshot saved in Pictures folder in my directory. Looking further in the forum, I found that the Linux Mint uses the gnome-screenshot for capturing the screenshot. But when I invoked the tool from the terminal, to my surprise, it was not installed in the default installation. Why? I don’t know.

So I installed the gnome-screenshot using

sudo apt-get install gnome-screenshot

After the installation, I again tried the and this time there were the screenshots saved in my Pictures directory.

This automatic behavior can be changed to the interactive mode capture as present in Ubuntu by following steps:

1. Go to System Settings from the main menu and select Keyboard.

Fig: System Settings Window

1. In Keyboard setting window, select the Shortcuts tab. Click on Custom Shortcuts and click on + sign. Enter the name as Screenshot or anything you like. In the command box type following:

For Interactive mode:

gnome-screenshot --interactive

For Copying to clipboard:

gnome-screenshot –clipboard

Refer the image below:

Fig: Keyboard Setting Window

Once done, click Apply and close the window.

This will bind the PrntScrn key to behavior you are comfortable with. Comment below if you face any issue or ask a question in QA.