SUMMARY Currently Spectacle creates screenshots by default in ~/Pictures and screencasts in ~/Videos. This is messy and annoying, especially if you create a lot of them. I would prefer us to default to putting them in the appropriate subfolders (~/Pictures/Screenshots for screenshots and ~/Videos/Screencasts for screencasts). Can we please change the default to do this (and create the directory if it doesn't already exist)? I know that this was previously asked in bug 448325, and elected to create a new bug because I'm covering both screenshots and screencasts in this bug. And before it's mentioned that it's configurable, at least the screencast folder is not configurable (nor are there any settings for screencast recordings like there are for screenshots). SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: Fedora Linux 38 (KDE Plasma) (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.7 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.109.0 Qt Version: 5.15.10 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION GNOME already does it this way and has since at least the change to the integrated screenshot/screencast experience in GNOME Shell in GNOME 42. Budgie intends to do the same thing.
We'd need to make the screencasts folder configurable too, and then we could change the default values for each of them. I'm not sure I see the win, though. You say, "This is messy and annoying, especially if you create a lot of them". But putting screenshots and screencasts in a subfolder doesn't fix that problem, it simple moves the problem out of sight, arguably making it worse since the user will have less incentive to clean up a deeply-nested folder they never otherwise look in. If your ~/Pictures/Screenshots folder has 5,000 items in it, how are you suppose to find the screenshot you just took by browsing? My sense is that if we want to improve the UX, we should go in the opposite direction and put all screenshots and screencasts on the desktop by default. This way they're in a place the user will always see and always have an incentive to clean up. This is what macOS does, FWIW.
> My sense is that if we want to improve the UX, we should go in the opposite direction and put all screenshots and screencasts on the desktop by default. This way they're in a place the user will always see and always have an incentive to clean up. This is what macOS does, FWIW. I know this is what macOS does (I own a couple of Macs) and I hate it there too. :)
What I think we can do here is expose the screencast save folder in the config window, and then people can self-satisfy. But I'm not convinced that ~/Pictures/Screenshots and ~/Videos/Screencasts are better defaults for the majority of people. Most users of Spectacle aren't taking dozens of screenshots per day and aren't expert users of the siftware who we can expect would benefit from such fine-grained organization by default. Certainly some are, and that's why we generally allow the output file format and save location to be extensively customized. But I would need some convincing to believe that regular people would benefit more from the change proposed here than from my counter-proposal. :)
As of https://invent.kde.org/graphics/spectacle/-/commit/8e9ed17988fd7b26a7badf54f9fd14d10280a43e, authored by Noah Davis, users with this desire can now self-satisfy by changing the recording folder independently of the screenshot folder. With both paths customizable, changing either of their default values in the future should be trivially easy.
Was the title accidentally changed? The original title of this was "Please create Screenshots in ~/Pictures/Screenshots and Screencasts in ~/Videos/Screencasts", which seems like a request to change the default image and video saving locations rather than simply a request to allow changing the video save location.
(In reply to Noah Davis from comment #5) > Was the title accidentally changed? The original title of this was "Please > create Screenshots in ~/Pictures/Screenshots and Screencasts in > ~/Videos/Screencasts", which seems like a request to change the default > image and video saving locations rather than simply a request to allow > changing the video save location. Looks like it was...
Nate, did you mean to mark this as intentional rather than fixed?
My intention was to transform the bug report into a request to make the videos path customizable (see Comment 3), and then mark it as RESOLVED FIXED now that that request has been implemented. This is because I deemed it unlikely that we would change the default paths for each to ~/Pictures/Screenshots and ~/Videos/Screencasts (respectively). But you're the maintainer, so if you think that's reasonable, then Neal can submit a new bug report requesting specifically that, now that it's possible for us to just change the default settings for each one.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #8) > My intention was to transform the bug report into a request to make the > videos path customizable (see Comment 3), and then mark it as RESOLVED FIXED > now that that request has been implemented. > > This is because I deemed it unlikely that we would change the default paths > for each to ~/Pictures/Screenshots and ~/Videos/Screencasts (respectively). > > But you're the maintainer, so if you think that's reasonable, then Neal can > submit a new bug report requesting specifically that, now that it's possible > for us to just change the default settings for each one. I don't see an issue with what was requested and I somewhat agree with changing the defaults (Android also uses a dedicated /Pictures/Screenshots folder), but not if there's no way to maintain the current defaults for existing users to prevent confusion. I do have an idea for how that could be done. Maybe in a kconf_update script I could look for the user's spectaclerc file, see if the entry for the default screenshot folder is not present (if it's present we don't need to do anything) and then write the old default to the config file.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/graphics/spectacle/-/merge_requests/271
Git commit 3d1e319eb06cf405d67b04ca03b238447bf79a47 by Noah Davis. Committed on 11/10/2023 at 22:45. Pushed by ndavis into branch 'master'. Change default save locations Screenshots go in ~/Pictures/Screenshots/ and Screencasts go in ~/Videos/Screencasts/. Existing config files are updated to explicitly use the old locations. M +7 -0 kconf_update/CMakeLists.txt A +46 -0 kconf_update/spectacle-24.02.0-keep_old_save_location.cpp [License: LGPL(v2.0+)] M +4 -0 kconf_update/spectacle.upd M +2 -2 src/Gui/SettingsDialog/spectacle.kcfg https://invent.kde.org/graphics/spectacle/-/commit/3d1e319eb06cf405d67b04ca03b238447bf79a47