XFCE Screenshooter

jacko · March 9, 2026, 1:09pm

Hi
I’m using XFCE4 version 16. When I press Print Screen I can save/print all of the screen but the option to “rubber band” an area and save it is not present. I’ve tried re-installing.

What am I doing wrong, or has the rubber band feature been removed?

J

conram · March 11, 2026, 5:31pm

Hi,
I saw the leap 16 xfce is in wayland and says experimental variant.
You probably using it in leap 16, means the 'rubber band" is non functional.
If you install the x11 version which you can using myrlyn, then you can boot to the xfce x11 and it will have that missing screenshooter feature.

shundhammer · March 12, 2026, 7:47am

It is possible that this is yet another restriction of Wayland due to security.

jacko · March 12, 2026, 9:53am

Hi
Thanks for that. I can boot to old 15.6 version for now.
J

conram · March 12, 2026, 2:40pm

One option to use the rubber band that works in wayland is to install flameshot.
It is working in xfce wayland.

shundhammer · March 12, 2026, 3:25pm

I usually take a screenshot of the entire screen and then use “Open with…”, then “Gimp” in the screenshooter popup. You can do a rough cut and then zoom in to 1:1 to do a pixel-perfect one.

jacko · March 13, 2026, 1:34pm

Flameshot looks promising but does not start. I get the error message:-“qt.qpa.plugin: Could not find the Qt platform plugin “wayland” in “”
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized.
Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, xcb.”

What do I need to install to sort this out??

Gimp will obviously work but is a little complicated needing two packages to be used. Thanks sundhammer.

J

conram · March 13, 2026, 4:29pm

When you open flameshot, it shows in the xfce4-panel status tray plugin.
If you click the flameshot in the status tray plugin you can open the configuration and in general tick or enable use of grim to capture screenshots. Grim is a screen capture tool for wayland . You may also install grim to make flameshot work in this config.

You can also go to your 'user/.config/flameshot/flameshot.ini and set

useGrimAdapter=true

Hope this help.

jacko · March 13, 2026, 6:02pm

I can type “flameshot” in a terminal emulator to get the error message shown above, but starting it from the start menu then nothing appears to happen.

I have installed grim. However flameshot does not appear in xfce4-panel status tray plugin and I do not have the file user/.config/flameshot/flameshot.ini present.

I created the file user/.config/flameshot and added flameshot.ini although this did not solve the problem. There appears to be something missing in my installation, possibly the Qt platform plugin “wayland”.

J

shundhammer · March 13, 2026, 6:29pm

It’s Qt’s completely insane way of telling you “Can’t open display”. It’s an epic fail.

Nothing. It’s not only a red herring, it’s actively sabotaging the user’s machine. You can reinstall all you want; it won’t change this particular problem.

It’s the kind of IT voodo that you meet in Android forums when some wiseass will for sure tell you to factory-reset your phone to make the problem go away. Well, it will: It will make everything that you put work into go away, and it will keep you busy for a week or two to make the phone usable again. By that time you will have forgotten that comparatively insignificant problem that made you do that drastic thing in the first place.

That part of the message is the reason why I actively suppress it in my own logger in QDirStat and Myrlyn:

github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat

src/Logger.cpp

master


      
          if ( msg.contains( "Could not connect to display" ) ||
               msg.contains( "failed to start because no Qt platform plugin" ) )
          {
              if ( msg.contains( "Reinstalling the application may fix this problem" ) )
              {
                  // Suppress this new message which is complete and utter garbage:
                  //
                  // "This application failed to start because no Qt platform
                  // plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application
                  // may fix this problem.
                  //
                  // Available platform plugins are: wayland-org.kde.kwin.qpa,
                  // eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc,
                  // wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl,
                  // wayland-xcomposite-glx, xcb."
                  //
                  // Seriously, who comes up with ■■■■■■■■ like this?
                  //
                  // Anybody who thinks that this might help a user does not have
                  // the first clue about user interaction. This only confuses

This file has been truncated. show original

If you google for “does flameshot work on wayland?”, the results are not exactly encouraging.

You could experiment with environment variables that might need to be set to tell Qt details about your Wayland sessions. Check the ones in myrlyn-sudo; WAYLAND_SESSION in particular. Your shell environment might not have them.

conram · March 13, 2026, 9:25pm

My bad. I was not clear enough. What I mean is, you have to go to this ex:
/home/jacko/.config/flameshot
There you will find the flameshot.ini.
If it is true that flameshot doesn’t have that flameshot.ini file then something is broken.
Apologize for my english, it is not my first language.

I don’t get those errors that you get when I open flameshot in the terminal and flameshot just work. the only thing different is you are in leap and I am on tumbleweed. Could be flameshot in leap is broken I don’t know I don’t have leap to test.

jacko · March 14, 2026, 10:06am

hI conram and sundhammer.

I still cant get flameshot to work but am giving up for now. I can boot suse 15.6 which works. Maybe when 16.1 comes out it will have been fixed.

Thanks again
J

malcolmlewis · March 15, 2026, 3:39am

@jacko try prefixing your command with QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb flameshot

jacko · March 15, 2026, 10:28am

hi malcolmlewis

Your hint makes the program start but with errors which appear and go too fast to read. As I said yesterday maybe when 16.1 comes out it will have been fixed.

j

gogalthorp · March 15, 2026, 12:21pm

Probably won’t be fixed unless you report it