SUMMARY When using Spectacle to export screenshots to other applications, it also automatically saves the file. This should be optional behavior as users may only want to export the screenshot without saving it locally. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Activate screenshot mode 2. Export to some application. OBSERVED RESULT Image is also saved. EXPECTED RESULT It should not automatically save files when exporting to other applications, or it should have a option to enable/disable automatic saving when exporting. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION This behavior creates unnecessary files when users only want to export the screenshot temporarily to another application.
While what you're asking for makes some sense, I'm not sure if it's possible to implement without unintuitive side effects. As you say, the screenshot is automatically saved when you do something like open the unsaved screenshot with KolourPaint through the Export menu. Fundamentally, the screenshot has to be saved or an application might not be able to open it, but that's not a blocker on its own. Screenshots can be saved as temporary files that will be automatically deleted later instead, which is something Spectacle is already doing for things like drag & drop with unsaved images. The next steps are where it may become unintuitive. For example, what happens when you press Save in KolourPaint? If the file sent to KolourPaint is a temporary file, you may not be aware or forget that the saved file will be deleted the next time you open Spectacle (that's when old temporary screenshots are cleared). Most apps won't warn you if you save an image in a temporary location, so you could lose a fair bit of time and sanity to mistakes.
Agreed; this is the sort of thing that seems sensible on first thought, but the devil's in the details, and the possibility of saving files in other apps that live in /tmp is real and *will* cause data loss for many people. My vote is to declare the current behavior intentional.
What if Export were renamed to "Save and Export", making it clear that saving is necessary to send to another application?
(In reply to John Kizer from comment #3) > What if Export were renamed to "Save and Export", making it clear that > saving is necessary to send to another application? That's not really appropriate since it won't save a new file if one has already been saved and it doesn't save if you just click on the button. The actual Save and Save As buttons will always try to save a new file when you click them.