Search your screenshots on Linux
Flameshot, Spectacle, grim or niri: whichever tool takes them, the screenshots end up as images nothing can search. gyotaku reads the text in each one on your machine, so a shortcut and a word you remember bring the right one back.
No root needed. x86_64 and arm64, on any distro with glibc 2.35 or newer.
Background: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai, c. 1831
gyotaku on Linux
What gets installed
The script downloads the release for your machine, checks its SHA-256 checksum and installs gyotaku and gyotaku-app to ~/.local/bin, with an entry in your app launcher. It changes nothing outside your home directory.
Release builds run on Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36, Linux Mint 21, Pop!_OS 22.04 and later, as well as Kali, Arch Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed, on Wayland and X11. The .deb and .rpm install to /usr/bin through your package manager (use the aarch64 files on ARM).
Debian, Ubuntu
Fedora
A keyboard shortcut
gyotaku-app opens the search window, and running it again closes it. Bind it to a key in your desktop's settings, using the full path ~/.local/bin/gyotaku-app:
- GNOME
- Settings > Keyboard > View and Customize Shortcuts > Custom Shortcuts
- KDE Plasma
- System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Add New > Command or Script
- Xfce
- Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts > Add
- Cinnamon
- System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Custom Shortcuts
- sway, i3
- bindsym $mod+s exec ~/.local/bin/gyotaku-app
- Hyprland
- bind = SUPER, S, exec, ~/.local/bin/gyotaku-app
- niri
- Mod+S { spawn "~/.local/bin/gyotaku-app"; }
How it runs
On first run it suggests the folders of common screenshot tools (Flameshot, Spectacle, ksnip, grim, Hyprshot, niri) along with ~/Pictures/Screenshots, with the number of images in each.
To read new screenshots in the background it installs a systemd user service, or an XDG autostart entry on systems without systemd. Saving images you copy without saving them is optional and needs wl-clipboard on Wayland or xclip on X11.
Where your data lives
Everything stays on your machine, and gyotaku never changes or deletes your screenshots.
- Settings
- ~/.config/gyotaku/config.toml
- Index, models, runtime
- ~/.local/share/gyotaku
- Thumbnails
- ~/.cache/gyotaku/thumbs
Updating and uninstalling
Run the install command again to update; the background reader restarts on the new version and the index is kept. The .deb and .rpm don't update on their own yet.
To remove it, run the script with --uninstall, then remove the keyboard shortcut yourself.
Uninstall