How to take Screen Shot without losing focus and mouse position

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1

I’m very new to KDE, working through the usual issues one gets when switching distros, releases, etc.

I have a replicable bug, not in KDE. To submit a useful bug report to the app developers, I need to take a screenshot with a particular one of their windows selected, and aware of my mouse position over a particular part of that window.

So far, every time I’ve attempted to use Spectacle, Spectacle has grabbed focus from my misbehaving app, allowing it to change its display in the process.

Is it possible on KDE to take a screen shot of a rectangular region without losing focus on the app controlling the window containing that region, and without that app perceiving a mouse movement - it should see the mouse as still present in a particular spot in its region?

If so, what tool should I use? (My best guess is that Spectacle cannot do this.)

If spectacle can do it, please tell me how? Do I need to set up and use some non-default keyboard commands?

Failing that, could some please give me a reference to detailed instructions for taking a whole window/whole screen screenshot (if that can be done without the target region losing mouse position) and then editing out everything but the target region. (I have serious privacy concerns here. The app with the bug handles my financial records.)

Note that I am allergic to icons. Please don’t tell me e.g. to “use search” when the word “search” is nowhere present in the UI. In the general case, I will have no idea what the various icons are supposed to represent, what they are called, or what they do. For a document to be useful to me, it needs to include an image of any tooltip-free icons it advises me to use, as well as or instead of referring to them by name.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

I’m running Kubuntu 25.10 with KDE Plasma 6.4.5, KDE frameworks 6.17.0

I don’t know how to determine what version of Spectacle came with the system.

p.s. I like KDE, mostly. Large parts of it seem natural and intuitive to me, where Gnome does not. I’m glad I switched, earlier this month. Unfortunately Spectacle is an exception to this; it reminds me of MacOS’ relatively recent (5 years?) dis-improvement to their screen shot capture utility. Suggestions for alternate screen capture tools would be greatly appreciated.

p.p.s. Which key is referred to in the Spectacle App as “Meta”? I’m using a generic PC keyboard, and it has ctrl, alt, shift, esc, and a key with a stylized windows icon. Is the windows icon key called “meta” in these docs? (Last I recall, I believe it was called “command”, but that may have been in Apple docs.)

2

You need to use de delay option (I marked with green arrow).

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PS: Meta is the Windows key.

Regards

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3

if you use the delay timer, will will give you the time to get your mouse into position for the shot before it steals the focus with the rectangle.

i’ve configured mine to not take the screenshot automatically and to always remember the selected area so i can reproduce the same region.

then on the main page make sure it include the pointer.

now when i hit prtsc i just get the window which offers me the buttons to choose from and the delay timer which i usually set to 3 sec unless i need more time to set up the shot.

once i’m ready, i hit the rectangular region button and quickly get my mouse into position for the shot, then just wait for the timer to run out.

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