Shellshot is a fast, cross-platform tool written in Rust that captures terminal sessions and transforms them into polished screenshots. Perfect for documentation, presentations, social media, or showcasing terminal workflows.

Features

• Beautiful Rendering: High-quality image generation with customizable window decorations
• ANSI Support: Correctly renders ANSI colors, styles, and formatting.
• Clipboard Integration: Copy screenshots directly to your clipboard with one flag
• Command Execution: Execute commands and capture their output automatically
• Customizable: Adjust window decorations, colors, padding, and output filename.
• Cross-Platform: Works on Windows and Linux

Installation

cargo install shellshot

Usage Examples

Usage Notes

• On Windows, some commands may require --shell to execute correctly (forces execution inside Bash on Windows).
• Either --output <file> or --clipboard must be specified, otherwise shellshot will fail.

Basic Usage

On Linux, commands usually work directly:

# Linux
shellshot -o out.png echo "Hello from ShellShot!"

On Windows, some commands (like echo) are shell builtins, not executables. You need to force execution inside a shell using --shell

# Windows
shellshot --shell -o out.png echo "Hello from ShellShot!"

This will execute the command, capture its output, and generate an image file named out.png in the current directory.

shellshot -o out.png ping -c 5 localhost

Command Options

--shell — Force execution inside a shell

The --shell flag forces Shellshot to execute the command inside a shell instead of running it directly.

Why this is needed:

• Linux/macOS: Forces execution inside sh. Most commands are either executables or shell builtins, so they usually run correctly without --shell. Use it if you want consistent shell behavior (e.g., for complex scripts or shell operators like pipes and redirects).
• Windows: Forces execution inside Bash. Many common commands like echo or dir are shell builtins, not standalone executables. Using --shell ensures these commands run correctly.

Example:

# Linux — works directly
shellshot -o out.png echo "Hello from ShellShot!"

# Windows — must use --shell because echo is a shell builtin
shellshot --shell -o out.png echo "Hello from ShellShot!"

--no-decoration

Remove window decorations (title bar and control buttons):

shellshot -o out.png --no-decoration node --version

--decoration <style> / -d

Specify the decoration style (default: classic):

# Linux
shellshot -o out.png --decoration classic ls --color=always
# Windows
shellshot --shell -o out.png --decoration classic dir

--output / -o

Specify a custom output filename:

shellshot --output out.png cargo build
shellshot -o screenshots/out.png cargo test

--clipboard

Copy the screenshot directly to your clipboard:

shellshot --clipboard git status

--width / -W et --height / -H

Specify the final image dimensions in columns (width) and rows (height), or use 'auto' (default: auto):

# Linux
shellshot -o out.png --width 70 --height 50 echo "Hello, world!"
# Windows
shellshot --shell -o out.png --width 70 --height 50 echo "Hello, world!"

--timeout / -t

Set a timeout in seconds for command execution:

shellshot -o out.png --timeout 5 ping -c 10 localhost

Examples

shellshot -o out.png cargo --version
shellshot --clipboard git log --oneline -5
shellshot -o out.png --no-decoration python --version

# Linux
shellshot -o out.png echo "Hello, Shellshot!"
shellshot -o out.png --decoration classic ls --color=always

# Windows
shellshot --shell -o out.png echo "Hello, Shellshot!"
shellshot --shell -o out.png --decoration classic dir

Support

For issues and questions:

• Open an issue on GitHub
• Check the documentation

License

This project is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.