How to make a screen capture in Weston

Revision as of 10:12, 24 October 2023 by Registered User (→‎Screen capture with a keyboard)
Applicable for STM32MP13x lines, STM32MP15x lines, STM32MP25x lines


Note: a screen capture is also named a snapshot or a screenshot capture.

1. Screen capture without a keyboard

The Weston debug tool named weston-screenshooter is used to make screen captures in PNG format. This tool can be used only with a Weston configured in debug mode. You can add the following line to the file named "/etc/default/weston" to enable the Weston debug mode:

OPTARGS=--debug
# if OPTARGS variable was already there, append "--debug" to it, for instance
# OPTARGS=--something
# becomes
# OPTARGS=--something --debug

The Weston debug mode will be taken into account after a stop/start of the Wayland Weston service, please refer to How to stop and start Weston article.

As Weston debug mode is now enabled, you can perform a screen capture with the following command:

 weston-screenshooter
Warning white.png Warning
If Weston is configured with a "weston" user instead of a "root" user, please use the following commands:
 su -l "weston" -c "weston-screenshooter"


The captured picture is named wayland-screenshot-*.png (PNG format) and stored in "/home/weston" or "/home/root" or "/" depending on the Weston configuration.

 ls /home/weston
typescript  wayland-1  wayland-1.lock  wayland-screenshot-2023-10-11_19-55-31.png  weston-previous.log  weston.log

You can copy the screenshot from the board to the host PC in the <file-path> directory (for example with the scp command).

 scp root@<ip address>:/home/weston/wayland-screenshot-*.png <file-path>/

2. Screen capture with a keyboard

See Weston keyboard shortcut for screenshot capture.