Capture shortcuts

Snipdeck captures with a single gesture: hold a modifier and drag a region. This page covers the capture model, the modifier matrix that decides where each snip lands, freeze-first capture for hover-sensitive UI, the New button, and the global hotkeys. The gesture differs by platform; each section says which platform it applies to.

Windows: Win + drag

To take a snip, hold Win and drag a region with the left mouse button. Click where you want one corner of the region, drag to the opposite corner, and release.

While you drag, Snipdeck shows a full-screen selection overlay on the monitor under your cursor so you can see exactly what you are selecting. The capture follows the cursor’s monitor: dragging on a secondary display captures from that display.

The modifier matrix

Add Ctrl, Alt, and Shift to the Win + drag gesture to control three things: whether the snip becomes a floating snip on screen, whether it is copied to the clipboard, and whether it is added to the gallery.

Read the matrix this way:

• Win + drag: the default. Captures the region and leaves it on screen as a floating snip. It is also saved to the gallery.
• Win+Ctrl + drag: floating and clipboard. Same as the default, plus the image is copied to the clipboard so you can paste it straight into a chat or document.
• Win+Alt + drag: clipboard only. A “copy this region” capture. The image goes to the clipboard but does not create a floating snip and is not added to the gallery. Use it for throwaway captures you do not want to keep.
• Win+Shift + drag: gallery only. The snip is saved to the gallery for later, with no floating window on screen and nothing copied to the clipboard.
• Win+Ctrl+Shift + drag: gallery and clipboard, no floating window. Saves the snip and copies it to the clipboard without leaving a floating window on screen.

Freeze-first capture

Some UI only appears while you hover: tooltips, dropdowns, menus. It vanishes the moment you move the mouse to start selecting. Freeze-first capture solves this.

Press Win+Shift+Space to dim and freeze the screen before you select. Snipdeck takes a snapshot of the screen at that instant and shows it frozen behind the selection overlay. You drag your region on the still image, so anything that was visible when you froze the screen, a hover tooltip included, is captured even though your cursor has moved.

This is the “freeze first” counterpart of the Win+Shift+S flow: once you arm it with Win+Shift+Space, the next left-drag starts the selection on the frozen image. You do not need to keep holding Win for that drag.

Freeze-first is the right choice whenever the thing you want only exists while the mouse is over it. For everything else, the plain Win + drag is enough.

Linux, GNOME: Super+Alt + drag

On GNOME, the capture gesture comes from the GNOME Shell extension bundled with Snipdeck; Installation explains how to set it up. Because Super + drag already moves windows on GNOME, the gesture is Super+Alt + drag, and it is active only while Snipdeck is running.

• Clipboard only has no gesture on GNOME (Win+Alt on Windows; here Alt is already part of the gesture). Use the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X hotkey instead.
• Esc cancels a drag.
• Keeping Super+Alt held lets you take several snips in a row.

With the extension, snips are placed where they were captured and stay above other windows.

Linux, other desktops

On desktops other than GNOME there is no modifier + drag gesture: it needs a global pointer hook, which Linux grants only by allowing a system-wide keylogger. There you start a capture from the hotkeys, the tray’s New Snip, or the New button in the gallery.

The New button and the tray

You do not have to hold a modifier. The New button in the gallery toolbar, or New Snip from the tray icon’s right-click menu, starts a capture. The menu on the New button’s arrow holds two more:

How the capture proceeds depends on the platform:

• Windows: Snipdeck hides its window and arms a one-shot drag. The next left-button drag captures a region as if you were holding Win, then disarms.
• Linux: Snipdeck hides its window and freezes the screen. You drag the region on the still image, so on Linux this path is freeze-first already.

On both platforms, Esc cancels an armed or ongoing capture.

Global hotkeys

Snipdeck registers five global hotkeys that work from anywhere, even when Snipdeck is not focused. The defaults are the same on both platforms:

The capture hotkeys take the same path as the New button: on Windows they arm the next drag, on Linux they freeze the screen.

On Windows and X11 you change them with the hotkey_* keys in settings.json. On Wayland the desktop owns global shortcuts: Snipdeck only proposes these on first launch, you approve them in a system dialog, and you change them afterwards in your desktop’s keyboard settings. See Keyboard shortcuts and Settings for details.

See also

• Quick start: your first capture, end to end.
• Floating snips: what you can do with a snip once it is on screen.
• Keyboard shortcuts: every shortcut, including the editor and gallery.
• Settings: defaults such as the hotkeys, the save format, and the folder.