Snamellit - desktop

Snamellit - desktop https://www.snamellit.com Zola en Sat, 25 Oct 2025 14:19:00 +0200 Screenshot in Sway with GUIX Sat, 25 Oct 2025 14:19:00 +0200 Peter Tillemans https://www.snamellit.com/posts/20251025t141904-screenshot-in-sway-with-guix-guix-linux/ https://www.snamellit.com/posts/20251025t141904-screenshot-in-sway-with-guix-guix-linux/ <h2 id="screenshots-in-sway-with-guix-home-manager">Screenshots in Sway with Guix Home Manager</h2> <p>A <a href="https://kaibreucker.dev/en/content/foss/sway/screenshots/">blog post</a> documented an elegant way to configure screenshots in wayland using <strong>grim</strong> and <strong>grimshot</strong>. After moving my sway config to use the <strong>GUIX</strong> <code>sway-service</code> to generate the config file Iost my configured screenshot bindings.</p> <h3 id="output-files">Output Files</h3> <p>The screenshots will be placed in the <code>Pictures/screenshots</code> folder with the timestamp as filename. To avoid duplication and ensure consistency we'll add a variable to generate the filename</p> <pre data-lang="scheme" style="background-color:#2e3440;color:#d8dee9;" class="language-scheme "><code class="language-scheme" data-lang="scheme"><span>(sway-configuration </span><span> (variables (append %sway-default-variables </span><span> `((menu . ,#~(string-append </span><span> #$fuzzel </span><span> "/bin/fuzzel" </span><span> " -w 50 -x 8 -y 8 -r 3 -b 232635ff -t A6Accdff -s A6Accdff -S 232635ff -C c792eacc -m c792eacc -f \"JetBrains Mono:weight=light:size=10\" --icon-theme=\"Papirus-Dark\" --no-exit-on-keyboard-focus-loss")) </span><span> (term . ,(file-append alacritty "/bin/alacritty")) </span><span> (screenshot_out . "$(xdg-user-dir PICTURES)/screenshots/$(date +\"%Y%m%d-%H%M%S\").png")) </span><span> )) </span><span> ...) </span></code></pre> <h3 id="key-bindings">Key Bindings</h3> <p>I often use various screenshots pasted in chat windows or Jira tickets so the clipboard is an important destination. Alternatively saving them to move them to a target folder for inclusion whereverr they needed is an important secondary use-case.</p> <p>We can now use the variable made previously and add the following keybindings:</p> <pre data-lang="scheme" style="background-color:#2e3440;color:#d8dee9;" class="language-scheme "><code class="language-scheme" data-lang="scheme"><span>(sway-configuration </span><span> ... </span><span> (keybindings (append </span><span> `(... </span><span> ;; Special key to take a screenshot with grim </span><span> ($mod+Shift+p . "exec grimshot copy anything") </span><span> ($mod+Shift+s . "exec grimshot save screen $screenshot_out") </span><span> ($mod+Shift+w . "exec grimshot save window $screenshot_out") </span><span> ($mod+Shift+a . "exec grimshot save area $screenshot_out") </span><span> ... </span><span> </span><span> ) </span><span> </span><span> </span></code></pre> <h2 id="deploying-the-configuration">Deploying the configuration</h2> <p>To activate the configuration</p> <pre data-lang="shell" style="background-color:#2e3440;color:#d8dee9;" class="language-shell "><code class="language-shell" data-lang="shell"><span>$ make home </span><span>echo Loading modules from ~/.config/dotfiles/guix/src </span><span>Loading modules from /home/pti/.config/dotfiles/guix/src </span><span>guix home reconfigure -L ~/.config/dotfiles/guix/channel -c 32 ~/.config/dotfiles/guix/home-config-`hostname | cut -d. -f1`.scm </span><span>... </span></code></pre> <p>which quickly (for some value of quick) updates the home configuration, writing a new <strong>~/.config/sway/config</strong> file.</p> <p>When the prompt returns a quick reload of the sway config with <code>$mod+Shift+c</code> and testing if the modifications are active.</p> <h2 id="testing-it-out">Testing it Out</h2> <p>I opened libre office writer to paste copied screenshots and made a mess to show the <code>copy anything</code> works as expected. It does, it highlights what it understands depending on your mouse location, a window if hovering over a window, a rectangle if you start selecting and all the screen if you move the mouse outside all windows (i.e. the boundary on a tiling wm). It is a bit fiddly so sometimes I select the wrong thing, but since it only clobbers the clipboard and I can quickly try again, this seems reasonable.</p> <p>Similarly using the 3 other bindings to save different type of screenshots.</p> <pre data-lang="shell" style="background-color:#2e3440;color:#d8dee9;" class="language-shell "><code class="language-shell" data-lang="shell"><span> $ ls ~/Pictures/screenshots/ </span><span>20251025-141106.png 20251025-145006.png 20251025-145019.png </span></code></pre> <p>Cool, that made a mess in the folder and <strong>displaying</strong> them show that it are actually screenshots. Cool.</p>