Taking and uploading screenshots on Linux

I wanted one shortcut that could capture a region, upload the image and leave a shareable URL in my clipboard. This Bash script connects Flameshot to s-ul.eu, with separate clipboard handling for X11 and Wayland.

The implementation builds on s-ul-curl-uploader and this Flameshot issue.

What you need

• flameshot
• curl
• libnotify
• xclip
• wl-clipboard
• jq

Install the dependencies on Arch

sudo pacman -S flameshot curl libnotify xclip wl-clipboard jq

Install the uploader

Download it

curl -o /home/$USER/.local/bin/sul-uploader https://gist.github.com/maotovisk/1a6a50c90982535bbaa69f6d8203ac74/raw/356f80ecc41587d09c0c68c84099c1c81f326002/sul-uploader

Read the script

#!/bin/bash

app_name="S-UL"

# Dependencies: curl, notify-send, xclip, wl-clipboard, jq
function _notify()
{
    notify-send --expire-time 1000 \
        --app-name "$app_name" \
        --icon 'flameshot' \
        "$1" "$2"
}

store_directory=/home/$USER/s-ul
if [[ ! -e $store_directory ]]; then
    mkdir $store_directory
fi

current_date=`date +"%Y-%m-%d %H-%M-%S"`
filename="Screenshot_$current_date.png"
complete_path="${store_directory}/${filename}"

flameshot gui -r >> "$complete_path"

if [[ $(file --mime-type -b "$complete_path") != "image/png" ]]; then
    rm "$complete_path"
    _notify "$app_name" "Screenshot aborted" && exit 1
fi

key="YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

method=POST
postURL=https://s-ul.eu/api/v1/upload
wizard=true
file="$complete_path"

actualsize=$(wc -c <"$file")
maxsize=209714177

if [ $actualsize -ge $maxsize ]; then
    _notify "\nSorry, your file is too large to be uploaded. Please try a smaller file.\n";
fi

_notify "$app_name" 'Uploading screenshot...'

read url < <(echo $(curl -s -X ""$method"" """$postURL""?key=""$key""&wizard=""$wizard"""" -F"file=@\"""$file""\"" | jq -r '.url'))
if [ -z "$url" ]; then
    _notify "$app_name" "Error: Error while uploading"
else
    if [ $XDG_SESSION_TYPE = "x11" ]; then
        echo -n "$url" | xclip -selection clipboard
    else
        wl-copy "$url"
    fi
    _notify "$app_name" 'Success! The link was sent to your clipboard'
fi

Finish the setup

• Make the file executable with chmod +x .local/bin/sul-uploader;
• Put your s-ul API key in the key variable. It is available in your s-ul.eu account configuration;
• Add a desktop-environment shortcut that runs the script;
  • Use the full path /home/$USER/.local/bin/sul-uploader. Most desktop environments do not include .local/bin in PATH when they launch a shortcut.