How to assign Print Screen (PrtSc) to Shutter in elementary OS

Elementary OS uses GNOME screen capture tool and the program obviously takes the Print Screen key shortcut for launching it. The default screen capture doesn’t have any powerful features, except for it can take basic screenshots, hence I use Shutter for screen capturing because of its awesome features including annotating, resize, crop, markup, etc. Problem is the ‘Print Screen’ key is still assigned to the default program capture tool and not Shutter (or any other program you are using for screen-capture), and this seems like a waste of a valuable key on the keyboard.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to assign Shutter to Print Screen key by creating some new keyboard shortcuts.

Step 1: On the plank, click on ‘System Settings”.

Step 2: Click ‘Keyboard’.

Step 3: In the left pane, click ‘Custom’.

Step 4: Click + button located at the bottom center.

Step 5: Enter shutter -f in the command field. This command will launch Shutter to capture screenshot in full screen mode.

Step 6: Now click on ‘Disabled’ and press ‘Print Screen’ key. You will see a popup that the Print Screen key is already assigned. Go ahead and click ‘Reassign’.

Step 7: Similarly, click + again and enter shutter -s in the command field.

Step 8: Again you get the same message that the key is used by screen shot tool and do you want to reassign. Click ‘Reassign’.

Step 9: Close all windows and logoff and login again for the new custom keyboard to work.

Note that Shutter should be auto start at login. If you haven’t done it yet, go to Shutter preferences and in the ‘Behavior’ tab enable ‘Start Shutter at login’.