I can Confirm bug.
I can define the folder, but the screenshot is still saved in Pictures folder.
there are so many files in that folder (5 or 6 years of family pics) that it's not usable for day to day work.

Works just fine here. What are you setting the key to ?

I'm setting it up to my desktop,  [/home/user/Desktop]

I am using file:///home/donnie/Downloads/Screenshots

http://imgur.com/ETH1fsE

(In reply to comment #3)
> I'm setting it up to my desktop,  [/home/user/Desktop]

try file:///home/user/Desktop

(In reply to comment #4)
> I am using file:///home/donnie/Downloads/Screenshots
> 

Does the directory exist ?

Yes, of course. http://imgur.com/jjYyreh

Does gnome-screenshot keep log files somewhere that can be more helpful to locate the problem.

Oh, indeed, I see the problem now. gnome-settings-daemon just passes a filename, to gnome-shell, not a complete path. And gnome-shell always saves in ~/Pictures.

Moving this bug to gnome-shell

The relevant function is get_stream_for_filename in src/shell-screenshot.c

(In reply to comment #9)
> The relevant function is get_stream_for_filename in src/shell-screenshot.c

It's called from prepare_write_stream(), and only for relative filenames. If gnome-screenshot passed an absolute path, it should work just fine ...

(In reply to comment #10)
> it should work just fine ...

... and it does in my testing:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.gnome-screenshot auto-save-directory '/home/florian/tmp'
$ gnome-screenshot
$ ls ~/tmp/*.png
/home/florian/tmp/Screenshot from 2013-05-05 23:47:36.png

(In reply to comment #8)
> Oh, indeed, I see the problem now. gnome-settings-daemon just passes a
> filename, to gnome-shell, not a complete path. And gnome-shell always saves in
> ~/Pictures.

Oh, you said gnome-settings-daemon. Can't g-s-d optionally pass an absolute path as gnome-screenshot does?

I tried manually to set the path in dconf-editor with no luck, I tried [file:///home/cowboycamilo/desktop] ando also tried [~/Desktop] none work..
I did a screencast for you all here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seAeelxLmxc&feature=youtu.be

(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > Oh, indeed, I see the problem now. gnome-settings-daemon just passes a
> > filename, to gnome-shell, not a complete path. And gnome-shell always saves in
> > ~/Pictures.
> 
> Oh, you said gnome-settings-daemon. Can't g-s-d optionally pass an absolute
> path as gnome-screenshot does?

Sure, it could. Lets move this to gsd then

Sorry, I'm not interested in providing more moving parts in this section of the code.

You can call the gnome-screenshot binary custom shortcuts and it will respect its own configuration options and save the files in the directory you want.

Is this the end of this and I should move on other other screenshot utility as clearly Gnome/Gnome-screenshot is too primitive or are we working out some other route to resolve this?

(In reply to comment #16)
> Is this the end of this and I should move on other other screenshot utility as
> clearly Gnome/Gnome-screenshot is too primitive or are we working out some
> other route to resolve this?

You can use gnome-screenshot to save wherever you want, just create a custom keyboard shortcut for it in the keyboard settings panel.
There won't be a configuration option to do this in gnome-settings-daemon, as it's already trivially possible to work-around this lack of configuration.

hmm How do I define the location. I checked the man pages of gnome-screenshot and I couldn't find information about defining location. Could you please provide a sample command?

Using -f option would let me define custom path of a file but not a default folder.

gnome-screenshot -w -f ~/Downloads/Screenshots/

** (gnome-screenshot:10189): CRITICAL **: Unable to save the screenshot: Error opening file '/home/donnie/Downloads/Screenshots': Is a directory

[donnie@donnie-laptop ~]$ gnome-screenshot -w -f ~/Downloads/Screenshots/screen1.png

If I define path and filename it works but when I just define folder it won't work.

Thanks.

gnome-screenshot still uses the auto-save-directory setting. Set the key to '/home/donnie/Downloads/Screenshots' or whatever you want, then define a custom shortcut using 'gnome-screenshot' as command.

Thanks Florian that did the trick.

*** Bug 729610 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

@Bastien if you're not interested, would you please leave the bug open for somebody else to take this?

As you can see from this and the other dupe bug report, there's definitely interest from users in this. See also https://marteydodoo.com/writing/2013/12/15/saving-screenshots-different-directory-gnome-3/

Thanks

(In reply to comment #22)
> @Bastien if you're not interested, would you please leave the bug open for
> somebody else to take this?

No, because the code for it won't go in gnome-settings-daemon. Keeping this bug opened wouldn't make any sense.

Where would it go? So I can file a bug for that component.

I assume not 'gnome-screenshot', as handling that as a separate app was discussed above.

(In reply to Bastien Nocera from comment #17)
> There won't be a configuration option to do this in gnome-settings-daemon,
> as it's already trivially possible to work-around this lack of configuration.

When your application saves to a hardcoded path, that's a bug - especially since as a number of bug reports note, the behaviour when the directory in question doesn't exist is ill-defined.  It is, quite simply, *not your job* to tell the user how they should organise their files.

When the application's predecessor, with which it shares a chunk of code, supported arbitrary paths to deal with this exact problem, that's a *regression*.

And when your entire response to these being raised as issues boils down to "but I don't *wanna* fix it", and you're suggesting that it's better for any user who wants their screenshot tool to respect their filesystem layout to perform a configuration tweak that involves changing *thirteen times* as many options as were necessary to make the previous tool behave sanely, that's plain childish.

Please reopen this issue, it is still present on 3.18.x and annoys some users. I for example don't want any software to mess up my ~/Pictures folder.

This bug is quite annoying. For anyone wondering how to workaround this bug, check out this recent blog post from Planet Fedora:

http://cialu.net/blog/gnome-screenshot-folder.html

I would also be interested in a fix here.

*** Bug 699276 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 747335 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Same problem here with GNOME Shell 3.26.1 (Ubuntu 17.10). Even when auto-save folder is specified using 'gsettings set org.gnome.gnome-screenshot auto-save-directory' screenshots are still saved to /home.

As explained about a thousand times:
When using the PrintScrn shortcuts, gnome-screenshot is *not* involved at all, so its preferences don't apply. You can make an argument that gnome-settings-daemon should have a similar setting (although that request has been rejected in the past), but complaining that the existing setting is "ignored" is like complaining that Chromium "ignores" your Firefox settings ...

Can we please re-open this enhancement request?

1. Add a dconf/gsettings key:
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys screenshot-save-directory

2. The format of this key should be 'file:///foo'

3. The default value of this key should be 'file:///$HOME/Pictures'

4. gnome-settings-daemon should use this setting

Justification:

1. Many users have asked for this. See issues closed as a duplicate of this one, stackexchange, askubuntu, etc.

2. This issue will become more prevalent as more users upgrade from Ubuntu 17.04/Unity to Ubuntu 17.10/GNOME.

3. The suggested work-around requires six custom keyboard shortcuts to override current keyboard shortcuts (PrtSc, Alt+PrtScr, Shift+PrtScr, Ctrl+PrtScr, Ctrl+Alt+PrtScr, Ctrl+Shift+PrtScr).

4. "I'm not interested in providing more moving parts in this section of the code" is an unacceptable reason to reject this enhancement request.

(In reply to Florian Müllner from comment #32)
> As explained about a thousand times:
> When using the PrintScrn shortcuts, gnome-screenshot is *not* involved at
> all, so its preferences don't apply. You can make an argument that
> gnome-settings-daemon should have a similar setting (although that request
> has been rejected in the past), but complaining that the existing setting is
> "ignored" is like complaining that Chromium "ignores" your Firefox settings
> ...

It's more like complaining that (to take a real-world example) Firefox 44 removed the option to prompt for acceptance or rejection of every cookie, and now ignores the setting and just accepts them - or rather, it would be like that if they'd also removed the option to /blanket/-ignore cookies, and hardcoded the accept behaviour.  Plenty of other settings had equivalents from GNOME2 to GNOME3 which were automatically migrated.  This one was simply removed, and not only that but no notification of the regression was given at the time.

That's a pretty valid complaint.

(in reply to Bastien Nocera from comment #17)
> There won't be a configuration option to do this in gnome-settings-daemon, as it's already trivially possible to work-around this lack of configuration.
(...and comment #23)
> > can we leave the bug open for someone else to fix?
> No, because the code for it won't go in gnome-settings-daemon.

I understand you're not interested in providing this fix - and it /is/ a fix; it's a regression that is actively making life difficult for people who want a sane folder-organisation structure - but am I to understand that you'll also be rejecting a patch written by anyone /else/ to solve it?

+1 to what Joe and Vinothan said above. Whether this is a bug or a feature request, and whether it exists in gnome-screenshot or gnome-settings daemon, the arguments against this ticket are very nitpicky and completely miss the point: this is a real usability problem!

I should also add that with Ubuntu 17.10 now shipping Gnome desktop by default, you suddenly have a huge influx of new users who used to be able to configure the screenshot directory and have now lost that feature. That's not Gnome's fault, of course, but it does suggest that demand for this feature just spiked recently.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1179/screenshot-locations/ appears to be a workaround for this, but I'm not sure how effective it is yet.

Colan: I just installed that extension and it solves the issue perfectly. Thank you for posting the link.

(In reply to Colan Schwartz from comment #37)
> https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1179/screenshot-locations/ appears to
> be a workaround for this, but I'm not sure how effective it is yet.

Another 'thank you', it's a shame that this bug is closed with WONTFIX.

I decided to break with the 90's schema of Images/Videos/Documents (seriously, who organizes its files in folder by media type nowadays?)

I lost nearly an hour until I fix my environment.

With those decisions it's how Gnome loses users.

The workaround to this is to disable the shortcuts in the Keyboard Shortcuts (click on it then Backspace) and add new custom ones which use gnome-screenshot. I use Shift + Print Screen for an area screenshot which just runs "gnome-screenshot -a"

This bug was reported the first time 5 years ago. Is it possible to reconsider the decision, given how many users are affected and willing to see this solved?

How much complexity would this add to g-s-d? How much does it break users' daily usability of the system?

Indeed it's possible to workaround this, with the easiest method being the aforementioned extension (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1179/screenshot-locations/). The other mentioned workarounds are only partial and require disabling the default shortcuts in order to create custom ones, which makes the process quite cumbersome.

I am not convinced that adding a new option to g-s-d is a great plan and we don't want to end up with multiple options. So, we would either need to run gnome-screenshot (which seems like overkill) or have a common location configuration for both gnome-screenshot and g-s-d.

I'm thinking to something simple, like a gsettings key:value that a user can edit like the following:

```
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.screenshot folder '/home/user/Pictures/Screenshots'
```

It could have the default value set to 'XDG_PICTURES_DIR', so to keep the default behaviour as it is at the moment. In this way g-s-d could read the value from gsettings, but the users would be able to set a different value from that.

Do you think something like that could be a good trade-off to keep the code modification minimal but still allowing users to have it editable?

As I said, I don't think that having two options for the same thing (one for g-s-d one for gnome-screenshot) is a decent solution.

Distressed by the Pictures directory cluttered with the screenshot files I wanted to ask about that and I have found that issue.

It still would be good to have any solution without a need to leverage a 3rd-party extension (or creating custom shortcuts) to change a directory for screenshots implemented in the way that satisfies the developers of related components.

Hi,

This didn't work for many years :(
is anybody working on this?

Best regards,
oDarek

This bug is officially closed and also this Bugzilla site is no longer used by the GNOME project.

There are two workarounds for this issue documented above:

There is a GNOME shell extension, which works on some versions but not others:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1179/screenshot-locations/
https://codeberg.org/kiyui/gnome-shell-screenshotlocations-extension/issues/7

You can customise each of the PrtSc, Alt+PrtScr, Shift+PrtScr, Ctrl+PrtScr, Ctrl+Alt+PrtScr, Ctrl+Shift+PrtScr commands to run gnome-screenshot instead.

If anyone wants to write a patch for this it will need to be submitted to gnome-shell's new GitLab project:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/