Bug 500937 - In the Region mode, provide an obvious way to reset selection to fullscreen
Summary: In the Region mode, provide an obvious way to reset selection to fullscreen
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: Spectacle
Classification: Applications
Component: General (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: git-master
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Noah Davis
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-03-02 07:20 UTC by Jin Liu
Modified: 2025-03-06 05:21 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
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Description Jin Liu 2025-03-02 07:20:13 UTC
SUMMARY
Currently, in the Region mode, once the user drag a region, there's no obvious way to reset the region to fullscreen. And there is a hidden way to reset the region, but I'm not sure if it's by design.

1. It would be nice to have an explicit button to select fullscreen.
2. Another obvious way is to manually drag from one corner to the other, but currently it results in a region one-pixel smaller than fullscreen.
3. Currently, right-clicking anywhere would reset the region. But this is unintuitive. If this is by design, then maybe a prompt text like "right-click to reset selection" could be added.
Comment 1 Noah Davis 2025-03-02 22:25:01 UTC
The intended way to do a selection that includes all screens is to remove the selection or manually select the whole region, whichever is best for you. In the latest git master version, the screenshot size label shows the maximum screenshot size when there is no selection. However, that's probably too subtle.

> 3. Currently, right-clicking anywhere would reset the region. But this is unintuitive. If this is by design, then maybe a prompt text like "right-click to reset selection" could be added.

I should probably do that. While it would be more obvious to have a button for selecting all, I want to avoid adding more buttons than absolutely necessary to save space. Because of virtual machine default settings, we want to make spectacle technically usable even if sub-optimal on 800x600 screens.
Comment 2 Noah Davis 2025-03-02 22:27:53 UTC
> 2. Another obvious way is to manually drag from one corner to the other, but currently it results in a region one-pixel smaller than fullscreen.

There should already be behavior that deals with this because it was there in the past, but it seems that it isn't working now.
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2025-03-05 16:54:37 UTC
In the git master version, while on the rectangular region overlay, you can click New Screenshot > Full Screen. That'll take a full screen screenshot and bring you to the viewer window, and from there you can annotate, copy, export, save, etc. 

Is there a reason this isn't good enough?
Comment 4 Jin Liu 2025-03-06 05:21:10 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #3)
> In the git master version, while on the rectangular region overlay, you can
> click New Screenshot > Full Screen. That'll take a full screen screenshot
> and bring you to the viewer window, and from there you can annotate, copy,
> export, save, etc. 
> 
> Is there a reason this isn't good enough?

1. That would take a new screenshot, where the screen content might have changed from the original screenshot.

2. Personally, I use the rectangular mode as the single entry point for all Spectacle functions (never managed to remember all different shortcuts). So I'd prefer doing everything in the same UI, instead of some in a different "viewer" UI.

A mock-up:

https://invent.kde.org/graphics/spectacle/-/issues/20