TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Take more screenshots (2022)

369 pointsby sanketpatrikarover 2 years ago

45 comments

cloudmikeover 2 years ago
When I started making a game [0] last year, first thing I did was write a little Unity script that takes a screenshot of the opening scene, counts current lines of code using CLOC [1] (for fun, not as a true measure of anything), and occasionally renders it all out to an image file.<p>With that I&#x27;m able to create some pretty fun time lapses of progress. I&#x27;ve been doing this at an arbitrary milestone, whenever my Luau [2] LOC surpasses C++ by another factor. This post reminded me I&#x27;m overdue for another now that Luau &gt; 3x C++ LOC.<p>I find it rewarding to look back at my progress. I&#x27;ll share in case it&#x27;s interesting for you too [3].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;2168330&#x2F;Helmscape&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;2168330&#x2F;Helmscape&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AlDanial&#x2F;cloc">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AlDanial&#x2F;cloc</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;luau-lang.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;luau-lang.org</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;kineticpoet&#x2F;status&#x2F;1619508466212831232" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;kineticpoet&#x2F;status&#x2F;1619508466212831232</a>
评论 #34564265 未加载
评论 #34656706 未加载
评论 #34582918 未加载
评论 #34567214 未加载
johnnyApplePRNGover 2 years ago
I made my first website on geocities and it kills me that I cannot for the life of me find a record of it any longer.<p>It was a website that &quot;sold&quot; replica&#x2F;counterfeit watches.<p>I was enthralled with them as a child for some reason. I knew they were popular items on the fledgling internet so I created a webpage for them on geocities and setup an email address to contact if you would like to purchase one.<p>I had lots of interested parties who wanted to buy the watches but unfortunately my parents would not front a 12 year old the cash required to purchase them in bulk from the shady internet supplier I had found. Probably a smart move on their part.<p>Fun times!<p>I ended up purchasing a few really high quality replicas when I visited China decades later as an adult.<p>I miss the early internet.
评论 #34564870 未加载
评论 #34566261 未加载
评论 #34566183 未加载
评论 #34567539 未加载
评论 #34564926 未加载
thejarrenover 2 years ago
I take screenshots all the time, and sync them to iCloud so I can access them immediately on my phone&#x2F;iPad. I also back up previous years of screenshots, I think I have back to 2015 right now.<p>But one thing that I&#x27;ve been keeping my eye on as well (and used for a month) is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rewind.ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rewind.ai&#x2F;</a> which records everything that happens on your M1&#x2F;M2 mac screen and is immediately searchable.<p>Just like Alex says here &quot;They’re not as good as having the original, working thing – but they’re much better than nothing. I can dip in quickly and easily, and instantly be reminded of the creativity of my past self.&quot; And I think arguably Rewind solves for that completely (with the added cost of increased storage space and less specific capturing&#x2F;resolution).<p>This isn&#x27;t a pitch for their product, it&#x27;s just a natural progression to screenshots&#x2F;capture that I believe is relevant here.
评论 #34566267 未加载
评论 #34563428 未加载
评论 #34563372 未加载
评论 #34567789 未加载
评论 #34564405 未加载
评论 #34564714 未加载
评论 #34568809 未加载
xpressvideozover 2 years ago
I have been taking screenshots for years, but it developed into a hoarding OCD. And it is ruining my life. My regular life is being interrupted by taking screenshots all the time, so I have relatively less time to work on important things. I don&#x27;t even view those screenshots again in the future so the time spent on those screenshots is completely wasted. I don&#x27;t recommend having a habit of taking screenshots to those that may be vulnerable to OCD.
评论 #34563979 未加载
评论 #34564069 未加载
评论 #34565746 未加载
评论 #34565163 未加载
评论 #34563698 未加载
albertzeyerover 2 years ago
I had a script once which generated a screenshot every minute or so. The idea was that I would then use some other machine learning supported scripts to extract some statistics. One motivation was that I needed to collect working time statistics, and I wanted to count the minutes that I had Eclipse open.<p>I even wrote a DB to store PNG files more efficiently. It deduplicates blocks, and thus achieves much higher compression rates: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;albertz&#x2F;png-db">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;albertz&#x2F;png-db</a><p>The analytics were harder than I thought. I had OpenCV at hand, and tried using those SIFT features (if I remember correctly) (note, that was 12 years ago, before we had more powerful neural networks), and it took me lots of trial and error via a lot of ugly heuristics, and in the end I just tried to identify the Eclipse icon in the Mac Dock. But it worked more or less.<p>And the scripts to analyze the screenshots: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;albertz&#x2F;screenshooting">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;albertz&#x2F;screenshooting</a><p>Then, I developed some scripts which would collect such information more directly, about the app in foreground, including the opened file or URL, etc. This is still running, with many years of data now. But I never really had any use of that data. Maybe someday I will extract some interesting statistics out of it.<p>This script is here, with support for Linux and Mac: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;albertz&#x2F;timecapture">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;albertz&#x2F;timecapture</a>
评论 #34577092 未加载
Aperockyover 2 years ago
&gt; For example, my oldest files were made in Microsoft Word on an iMac G3 running Mac OS 9. I can open them in a modern word processor, and they look similar – but it’s not the same. Some of the fonts and graphics are missing, and I don’t know where I’d find replacements.<p>&gt; It’s even harder for an undocumented side project I abandoned years ago. Having the code isn’t the same as a working application.<p>The author&#x27;s solution to this is apparently screenshots, I have to respectfully disagree.<p>For software, side project or not, it should probably come with dependency configurations (granted, in early 2000s this isn&#x27;t as mature as it is today) and some tests. My side projects basically all have tests, these tests are vital for picking up years later and for validation while developing.<p>For personal notes, I use this script which upon `$ diary` would create&#x2F;open an entry for the current day in the appropriate folder with vim: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Aperocky&#x2F;diaryman&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;diaryman.sh">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Aperocky&#x2F;diaryman&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;diaryman.sh</a>. Text files will last forever, it has some basic flavoring with markdown, but that&#x27;s it. The folder where this is indexed is without a doubt the most valuable data on my computer, and it stretches back years.<p>I do occasionally take screenshots but never for reasons that author find screenshot to be useful for.
评论 #34564451 未加载
评论 #34564669 未加载
评论 #34566832 未加载
评论 #34565714 未加载
darkteflonover 2 years ago
So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?
评论 #34564232 未加载
评论 #34567061 未加载
评论 #34564195 未加载
评论 #34564134 未加载
评论 #34564198 未加载
forgotmypw17over 2 years ago
Just record your entire session with OBS, set at 3fps.<p>I can&#x27;t count the number of times I&#x27;ve found it helpful to be able to check what I was doing X time units ago.
评论 #34564281 未加载
评论 #34564987 未加载
评论 #34584471 未加载
评论 #34568516 未加载
thdcover 2 years ago
This is a lesson I learned too late.<p>Consider extending this idea outside of digital work, to any online hobby. In my case, I think back to all the time I spent on MMOs (basically raised online) and wish I had taken screenshots or recordings of my time then; I have none and it makes me sad.<p>Apply it to real life, too. You&#x27;ll never know what little meaningful events you&#x27;ll wish you had records of in the future.
评论 #34563654 未加载
评论 #34563990 未加载
pigtailgirlover 2 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32215277" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32215277</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34544199" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34544199</a>
MonkeyMalarkyover 2 years ago
I used to sent screenshots of chat conversations to my ex all the time because she was always &quot;reinterpreting&quot; the details of past conversations. Turns out this was a maladaptation to cope with her abusive behaviour and wildly untreated borderline personality disorder. So FYI, if you find yourself in the same situation, take a step back, reevaluate, and ask others around you for help.
nickjjover 2 years ago
Yep this is sound advice. I have dozens of screenshots of old websites I built from 1997-2002 and it&#x27;s fun revisiting them once in a while. It&#x27;s all sitting in a &quot;_legacy&quot; folder with 104 projects that I&#x27;ve copied from HD to HD over the years.<p>On the other hand, I have a few old VB6 apps that I didn&#x27;t release publicly that I wish I had screenshots of because I didn&#x27;t think about screenshotting them at the time.<p>Back then taking screenshots was more common I think. Having a &quot;screenshots&quot; section on your tool&#x27;s website was pretty normal and expected. Especially since back then streaming video wasn&#x27;t readily available. A screenshot was the only way to showcase what you&#x27;ve built visually. Also for websites you usually had a PSD file with the whole site&#x27;s layout that you later sliced up into images when creating the markup, so at the very least you probably have that PSD sitting around.
neilvover 2 years ago
With most side-project software I wrote in the 90s, I definitely found that, nowadays, a screenshot would be more valuable to me than being able to run it.<p>Some side-project screenshots I do have, I couldn&#x27;t practically reproduce the conditions under which they were made, even when I can easily still run the code.<p>I do need to be better about my <i>professional</i> nostalgia&#x2F;portfolio. Even a couple years ago, when I wrote an internal-only iOS app that worked very nicely, and was sure to get screenshots and video, adding them to the company-wide &quot;nostalgia folder&quot; I maintained... in all the work I did for a smooth handoff when I left that startup, to make sure the company didn&#x27;t effectively lose any data, I didn&#x27;t think to ask about keeping some copies of less-sensitive nostalgia photos&#x2F;videos for myself.
Waterluvianover 2 years ago
One of the most powerful things in the mid 00s was having this app that automatically uploaded any screenshot on my Mac and put a URL in my clipboard. This also combined with the feature of the Mac to screenshot a specific area of the screen.<p>This was before the UX of sending images was trivial and the UX of this was so amazing that others asked me to help them set it up.<p>Mind you this was high school and university so it was for what are now called memes as well as homework related stuff. So no real fear of uploading work secrets or whatnot.<p>The other killer feature was turning on this ability to zoom in the whole screen with hot keys + mouse wheel. I used it CONSTANTLY. It was just a habit to zoom to the width of the actual website content, for example.
评论 #34564024 未加载
评论 #34566579 未加载
magicbuzzover 2 years ago
Absolutely. When I do front-end work, I screenshot every visual change in the PR. Boss wants a look at the current work -&gt; screenshot Users want to see a difference -&gt; screenshot.<p>But the most valuable it that it builds up a visual history of changes in my Screenshots dir.
评论 #34569814 未加载
simonwover 2 years ago
I deeply regret the many projects from earlier in my career that I never thought to take screenshots of. And I&#x27;m mostly a backend developer!
lostmsuover 2 years ago
I am actually pondering about making a service or an autonomous app out of a tool I made for myself, that records the screen, keystrokes, mouse, keyboard focus location, and additionally traces the gaze if you have suitable hardware (e.g. Tobii). The goal is to be able to make some sense of all that data with the current deep learning techniques (think Copilot on steroids).<p>Although as a service it would be extremely expensive: video adds terabytes of storage every year, and will require even more expensive compute for deep learning. Probably a few thousand or even tens of thousands $ a year.
评论 #34565305 未加载
badrabbitover 2 years ago
I actually am in a position where I need to take a screenshot but haven&#x27;t found any tool on linux that has the right UX like macos builtin screenshot or on windows, greenshot and lightshot.<p>I want to press printscr or some shortcut and immediately screenshot an area of the screen or the whole screen and by default have it saved to a numerically incrementing files under a folder I configure and not have to close or interact with any popups. This is on Linux. Any recommendations?
评论 #34563892 未加载
评论 #34563562 未加载
评论 #34563355 未加载
评论 #34567182 未加载
评论 #34564112 未加载
评论 #34565289 未加载
jerieljanover 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve definitely learned to take more screenshots for over a year now and I&#x27;m glad I took the time to &quot;optimize&quot; my process: making use of tools like Syncthing to collect screenshots from my phone and laptops, automatically renaming and filing them in folders and aggressively compressing old screenshots with Hazel, and taking better screenshots overall with Shottr. Oh, and a few handy Shortcuts to stitch and grid screenshots.<p>It&#x27;s a thing I didn&#x27;t expect to be a quality-of-life improvement, but it really did, whether it&#x27;s to remind me of the little but important things that I&#x27;ve done and am glad to recall weeks after, or to provide helpful TODOs or visual documentation on things that I end up doing from time to time.
评论 #34567399 未加载
cmodover 2 years ago
I&#x27;d add to this: Take screenshots, and consider compiling them into a book. [0]<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;craigmod.com&#x2F;journal&#x2F;digital_physical&#x2F;#book" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;craigmod.com&#x2F;journal&#x2F;digital_physical&#x2F;#book</a>
press-any-keyover 2 years ago
I use SnagIt to capture a screenshot with a single keystroke when I hit the print-screen button. I have configured SnagIt to automatically store .png file with a date&#x2F;time stamp.<p>Out of 100 screenshots, 99 will never be viewed, but that 1 out of 100 is valuable.
评论 #34564517 未加载
评论 #34564560 未加载
deweyover 2 years ago
I take a lot of screenshots, even if it&#x27;s just for reason as &quot;oh I have to remember that&quot;. I automatically store them in a directory that&#x27;s synced via Syncthing between my work laptop and home NAS. That way I have access to all of these from everywhere.<p>Sometimes I just jump back to some point in time and scroll through them, it&#x27;s very easy to get &quot;stuck&quot; after looking at old screenshots for 15 min. Old websites, old projects, screenshots from IRC. It&#x27;s always fun and I feel like I get a lot of value out of that simple workflow.
kledruover 2 years ago
While images might last longer than some other files in terms of compatibility, the most durable and flexible format is still plain text. So if what you want is to preserve your ideas, try writing.
naetover 2 years ago
I made some art zines in an older version of MS Word that I saved, the source files for, but when I went to open and print them years later the formatting and images were completely destroyed even though Word is supposed to be backwards compatible.<p>I thought the .doc file would be a good way to save it, since it was closest to the source and I could edit things later if I needed. I ended up having better luck when I could find the rendered PDFs or rasterized images instead. They were less editable, but far more stable for archiving and returning to after long periods of time.
dirtyidover 2 years ago
Want an archival program that would take 25% size screen shots every X or seconds (or fraction of) and record low bitrate sound when computer active. Index to searchable text and have system up sample data later. Maybe black and white with very limited color info for recolouring as well. So many link rot content that&#x27;s too hard or difficult to track down online vs being assured there&#x27;s some fragment of local version that you know you&#x27;ve consumed in the past. Probably log a life times activity with a few dozen terabytes.
评论 #34568368 未加载
tomatohsover 2 years ago
It&#x27;s always bugged me that software breaks so easily. Even with the full source code, it can be impossible to get something running again just months later. I&#x27;ve documented my entire work history with screenshots in my portfolio [1], which is sort of weird considering the heavy backend work put into it that isn&#x27;t reflected.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jnnngs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jnnngs.com&#x2F;</a>
oldstrangersover 2 years ago
Everyone doing any sort of creative work should maintain a portfolio (writer, developer, musician, painter, architect, interior designer, literally everyone).<p>I keep recordings of websites I&#x27;ve done on YouTube and add them to my portfolio (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zchry.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zchry.org&#x2F;</a>). It&#x27;s kind of cathartic to me to be able to revisit things I&#x27;ve spent hundreds of hours on, especially long after they&#x27;ve run their course.
jw1224over 2 years ago
Shout out to CleanShotX[1], top-quality software and now absolutely indispensable to me.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cleanshot.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cleanshot.com&#x2F;</a>
评论 #34564501 未加载
kaspersetover 2 years ago
I use TimeSnapper for taking screenshot of the active screen area every 5 seconds. It has helped me on some occasions for notes that I missed during the online meeting.
ctxcover 2 years ago
I built something to take periodic screenshots of Electron apps while discarding duplicates. Sadly I never got around to building more Electron apps, so it&#x27;s not feature complete (I intended it to have more options). But the basic periodic screenshotting mechanism works.<p>I might continue if there&#x27;s any interest :)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;CatalanCabbage&#x2F;electron-vlog">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;CatalanCabbage&#x2F;electron-vlog</a>
mgerbover 2 years ago
It saddens me that I don’t have many screenshots from when I was younger, even if it was just pictures of my desktop. Although I make an effort to take more screenshots these days, I made a simple tool to take screenshots on an interval. I wish I had done something like this 15 years ago.<p>If anyone is interested: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mgerb&#x2F;mgcapture">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mgerb&#x2F;mgcapture</a>
GaggiXover 2 years ago
I on the other hand should take fewer screenshots, I have more than 136000 screenshots on my phone and it is not even a year old. Similar number with my PC.
评论 #34563756 未加载
评论 #34563536 未加载
评论 #34563535 未加载
urdaover 2 years ago
I love screenshots. In many of my internal code reviews and changes I will include them to demonstrate or highlight changes.<p>Take more screenshots! Let me see what you see!
accrualover 2 years ago
Yes! I take screenshots on my personal machine whenever I feel like it would be interesting to look back on. I have about 12 years of screenshots from different machines. I can see the music I was listening to, the tabs I had open, my wallpaper and theme, the OS. I can see my digital workspace evolving and changing over time and I appreciate being able to do this.
smusamashahover 2 years ago
I will recommend using OneNote for putting down screenshots along with text description or whatever you want to write.<p>It suits perfectly for this kind of usage and is as freeform as the screenshots. Write anywhere, put screenshots anywhere, even attach any other kind of files anywhere within the doc.
andreygrehovover 2 years ago
Here is a fun story about screenshots.<p>All of us had that feeling: you are browsing the Internet and suddenly see something cool. You either forget to bookmark it or that cool thing is not cool enough to be amongst your bookmark items (which are clearly much cooler). Sometimes you may also think: &quot;Whatever, I have my browser&#x27;s history, I&#x27;ll find it later if needed&quot;. Later, you want to show that cool website or app or whatever to your friend. You check your bookmarks, well, nothing there. You check your browser&#x27;s history and can&#x27;t find it - you don&#x27;t even remember the website. Later, you realize that on top of evertyhing, you were using the Incognito mode and there is no way to find anything for that session.<p>Well, when it comes to browsing history, there is a chance to look back and go through the visited websites (if you are lucky). However, what about web forms or something you were coding and then said &quot;f### it, i don&#x27;t need it&quot;, closed the file and then in a few days later: &quot;damn, i should&#x27;ve saved that file&quot;..<p>So, I had millions of situations like that. At some point, I was like: &quot;this shit can&#x27;t go like that forever&quot;. And I found the solution.<p>I installed a spyware on my own computer. The spyware would make screenshots either every Nth second or each time a user switches from one application to another. To activate the spyware&#x27;s interface, you (as an evil hacker who has access to your victim&#x27;s local computer) would have to setup a secret key combination (say Ctrl+A+I+P), followed by a password. The spyware interface allows you to see everything that was happening on the computer: list of loaded applications, screenshots (!), keys you typed, everything!<p>This post gets so long, but the result was a pure success. I used the tool a shit ton of times to recall what I did in the pass.<p>FAQ:<p>Q: Wouldn&#x27;t the screenshots take a lot of space on your hard drive?<p>A: No. They were compressed. The quality was good enough to understand everything.<p>--<p>Q: What about the data going to someone else&#x27;s computer over the network, say, the creators of the spyware?<p>A: This was a local spyware. No network traffic whatsoever.<p>--<p>Q: Do you still use the tool?<p>A: No. This was many, many years ago. I was a Windows user back then. I haven&#x27;t seen similar tool since I switched to Mac computers.
评论 #34568302 未加载
评论 #34565334 未加载
评论 #34565218 未加载
s1monover 2 years ago
I worked with someone who took a lot of screenshots and dumped them into powerpoints as a record of the work done on projects. It becomes a way of journalling or recording. Having that kind of record is really helpful, and I wish that I had the habit.
aj7over 2 years ago
Screenshot-&gt;crop-&gt;Apple Notes is very standard for me. I try to remember to select and copy some appropriate text from the page to act as title text. Copying the url into the note completes it.
bonestamp2over 2 years ago
Now that MacOS indexes text in your screenshots, it&#x27;s also a lot easier to comb through all your screenshots when you&#x27;re looking for something specific.
Gelotoover 2 years ago
I collected a lot, didn&#x27;t find the time to organize it and also lost a lot.<p>I&#x27;m now quite happy of not having too much.
mensetmanusmanover 2 years ago
I’m afraid for when Apple prevents screenshots due to drm or enterprise policies. Shows a huge lack of trust.
xkcd1963over 2 years ago
Don&#x27;t use whatsapp or instagram, apps that prevent taking screenshots. Or jailbreak your phone.
digitalsushiover 2 years ago
i regularly right click a word i dont know, get the definition, and then screenshot the context with the web page, the word highlighted, the definition, and toss the fresh screenshot right into a vocab folder on the desktop
aaws11over 2 years ago
previous discussion:<p>sept 2022 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32215277" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32215277</a>
bmitcover 2 years ago
Not everyone can take and take with them screenshots of their work though. The vast majority of my work is hidden behind company and other walls.