Capture

Capture offers screenshots and recording, with Pause/Resume and Stop while a recording runs. Recording audio cycles none, system, mic and mix; microphone choices are forgotten on restart.

Under Umbriel, area screenshots need slurp and grim, output screenshots need grim, and copying needs wl-copy. A copy failure keeps the saved PNG. Window screenshots, color picking and niri’s cast controls are unavailable. Screen and window recording require niri IPC; area recording under Umbriel is unverified.

kanade capture screenshot area
kanade capture color
kanade capture record start screen system
kanade capture record stop

Verb	What it does
capture screenshot area|window|output	Saves under ~/Pictures/Screenshots and prints the path; niri captures all three, Umbriel supports area and output
capture color	Picks a pixel with niri’s picker, copies it as #rrggbb, shows it on the Island and prints it
capture record start [screen|area|window] [none|system|mic|mix]	Records to ~/Videos/Screencasts; window recording uses GStreamer and ffmpeg
capture record pause|resume|stop|status	Pause needs ffmpeg; stop joins the segments and prints the path
capture cast window|monitor|clear	Changes what a screen share with a dynamic cast target shows

With capture.annotate = true, a screenshot saved by Kanade opens an editor: drag rectangles or arrows, Undo or Ctrl+Z removes the last shape, Save writes <stem>-annotated.png, and Escape closes without writing. Annotation is off by default; it has no text, crop or layer tools.

Recording quality and encoder come from [recording]: quality is low, medium, high or max, and encoder is vaapi, nvenc, software or auto, which takes the first that works.

Caution

A recording is written from the first frame, so one you never pause is finished at that name. Paused segments go in a hidden .parts folder beside the file and are joined on stop; a long join can take over 5 seconds, so stop may say it is unknown while the file still lands.

See also

Recording configuration, media and capture CLI, and capture gaps.