Let me start out with that I don’t use EndeavourOS/Arch, I used to but I stayed here for the community and now I use Fedora Silverblue. I did recently start to notice a minor thing that bothers me with Gnome and it’s the following.
When creating windowed screenshots and you open them in an image viewer or a web-browser I see this white border around the entire image. I did some searching around and then I find this issue from 4 years ago and it seems to be as designed.
However someone else I know has the same gpu runs Arch and doesn’t have the white border or border issue with windowed screenshots. I kind of think it would be gpu related, but this person has the same gpu as me. So as another test I booted in Fedora Workstation live to see if I had the problem with the white border with windowed screenshots and I still did. Then this other person did the same on his system and this person still had no issues with a white border or border with windowed screenshots. So this makes me think it’s either hardware or firmware related since we booted the same Fedora workstation 40 live environment and had different results with the windowed screenshot test.
I also booted from the Garuda Gnome live installer environment and tried it there, there I get the same but only the border isn’t white but a border of grey and white squares. However the odd thing is when creating windowed screenshots of Steam or Battlenet I don’t get the white border when opening the screenshotted images. So this really confuses me as to what the problem is, since that seems to go against the other test results.
What I would expect is that that it would be just a full image without an ugly border around the image like that, I can probably just get on with it since it’s something so small but it bugs me more that I can’t figure out the cause. So I am wondering if any other Gnome users here have this issue and if they were able to fix it and if someone knows why this happens to some people and to other it doesn’t because I have no idea anymore since it’s such an odd issue.
Windowed screenshot here. Edit. There’s a border although it appears to be clear here in the forum. This was taken against my wallpapered background for testing purposes. If you open “original image” it shows up white.
Thanks replying and for sharing! Can you open that windowed screenshot with your image viewer and then take an entire screenshot of your desktop so that you can view that border? So like this, this is what I am seeing
As far as I’m aware there is no clean way to get window screenshots without a shadow, since they’re rendered by apps themselves. If that were to change I’d not be against an option to enable/disable shadows, but AFAIK that’d be very difficult.
And someone else says this.
I mean, that’s same thing as server-side decoration. Really though at this point you should be talking to Wayland/Mutter people, not me
Making me think it’s a Wayland thing but I tested out in a vm running Arch with an Xorg session and than it happens as well.
I didn’t start noticing until this last week and it’s been keeping me busy most of this last weekend trying to figure it out. So I have been trying out different things but so for all my own test results get that white border or some sort of border and someone I know with the same gpu never gets that border with windowed screenshots even when both using the same Fedora Workstation live iso.
Yeah If you make the window full screen and then do a windowed screenshot you don’t get the white border or however that border shows up.
No it doesn’t but it bugs me more that I can’t understand why it’s happening and why it’s happening to some people and not to others.
If I remember correctly they use “adw-gtk3-theme”, same as me. But I’ll double check again, however I think that is for legacy applications. Since we were having different results when booting off of the Fedora Workstation live iso where everything is default I wasn’t leaning towards theming making a difference.
I actually tried different themes myself and none of them make a difference with the (white) border appearing. The only way I have found to avoid the (white) border for a windowed screenshot is by using manual selection when creating a windowed screenshot instead of windowed selection.
That’s the impression I’ve been getting since the issue I shared in this topic shows that its labeled as “Expected Behavior”.
Thanks for sharing your screenshot! That’s what I get when live booted into Garuda Gnome and with my Silverblue install I get a white border. What’s been bothering me about this is that someone I know running Arch, also uses Gnome and doesn’t have the border problem with windowed screenshots. When both booting from the same Fedora Workstation iso live environment, I have the border issue and that other person doesn’t.
I have found the only solution for me is to use manual selection instead of windowed selection when making a windowed screenshot. But it’s just driving me up the wall not knowing why the border appears for some people with windowed screenshots and doesn’t for other.
So far from folks here on at least 4 distros. . . it doesn’t . I’m guessing the person you know didn’t take a windowed screenshot or it literally was just fixed. My laptop is intel, desktop amd, both show it. I have been using gnome 40+ since it was in beta, and that’s the only way I’ve ever seen it the last few years on about a dozen computers I’ve had come and go.
There was a miscommunication about what windowed screenshot meant between me and that person, using “area selection” instead of “windowed selection” Now that I have that straightened out this person is getting the same results as everyone in this topic, so it’s by design as that original issue mentioned. My mind has been put at ease.
Thanks everyone for your replies and sharing your screenshots!
FWIW, I also think it’s dumb. I don’t understand why it’s can’t literally outline the window and there needs to be a “background” to it. You can just take a selection though.
Glad I got a solution! Although, I think I’ll dedicate this one to the Gnome team and hopefully them fixing this and making me wrong sooner than later. hahahaha
Yeah that’s what I will do from now on, the only thing is that takes more time since I try to be precise when I select a window and it takes several tries to get it perfect usually.
It seems an issue was opened in the mutter git repo for this windowed screenshot border issue as well and that was closed.
But there is still an open issue in the gnome-shell git repo about it.
So that gives me some hope still that it will eventually get solved.
