Is there a way to take a screenshot using Java and save it to some sort of image?

Question

Simple as the title states: Can you use only Java commands to take a screenshot and save it? Or, do I need to use an OS specific program to take the screenshot and then grab it off the clipboard?

Thanks to this question, I wrote a tutorial for absolute beginners on my blog: http://www.thepcwizard.in/2012/12/java-screen-capturing-tutorial.html — ThePCWizard, Dec 24 '12 at 08:59
http://web.archive.org/web/20090204074007/http://schmidt.devlib.org/java/save-screenshot.html — John Millikin, Sep 12 '08 at 04:39
@rajeevpani.. Article moved here: https://blog.vidursoft.com/2012/12/java-screen-capturing-tutorial.html — ThePCWizard, Apr 16 '22 at 07:01

score 195 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 22 '10 at 22:12

195

Believe it or not, you can actually use java.awt.Robot to "create an image containing pixels read from the screen." You can then write that image to a file on disk.

I just tried it, and the whole thing ends up like:

Rectangle screenRect = new Rectangle(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize());
BufferedImage capture = new Robot().createScreenCapture(screenRect);
ImageIO.write(capture, "bmp", new File(args[0]));

NOTE: This will only capture the primary monitor. See GraphicsConfiguration for multi-monitor support.

edited Apr 22 '10 at 22:12

jjnguy

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answered Sep 12 '08 at 04:56

David Citron

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I wonder if this is what screen sharing applications like Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com/) use. – Chris Wagner Apr 22 '10 at 22:25
@java_enthu actually yes, it will be work without console if you will hardcode path to screenshot in your app. – Dmitry Zagorulkin Aug 27 '12 at 13:56
2

Robot does not include the mouse in the screen capture. Is there a similar function which does the exact same thing, but DOES include the mouse? – nullUser Jun 27 '13 at 15:14
3

is there a way to capture the mouse cursor as well ?! – Mehdi Karamosly Aug 20 '13 at 02:12

score 22 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 08 '18 at 17:37

22

I never liked using Robot, so I made my own simple method for making screenshots of JFrame objects:

public static final void makeScreenshot(JFrame argFrame) {
    Rectangle rec = argFrame.getBounds();
    BufferedImage bufferedImage = new BufferedImage(rec.width, rec.height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
    argFrame.paint(bufferedImage.getGraphics());

    try {
        // Create temp file
        File temp = File.createTempFile("screenshot", ".png");

        // Use the ImageIO API to write the bufferedImage to a temporary file
        ImageIO.write(bufferedImage, "png", temp);

        // Delete temp file when program exits
        temp.deleteOnExit();
    } catch (IOException ioe) {
        ioe.printStackTrace();
    }
}

edited Mar 08 '18 at 17:37

dzikoysk

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answered May 29 '12 at 09:01

DejanLekic

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Any reason for why you're not liking Robot? – Simon Forsberg Jun 12 '12 at 06:22
2

Think of it simply as a matter of taste. – DejanLekic Nov 09 '13 at 11:34
3

It looks like this should have the advantage of working even if the target window is obscured before the screenshot is taken. – Brad Mace Jul 28 '14 at 14:33
8

On the other hand, this gets only the contents of the window, whereas with `Robot` you can also get the window's frame and titlebar. – Brad Mace Jul 28 '14 at 15:57
@BradMace: that is a good point. I did not need the frame and titlebar, just the content... – DejanLekic Apr 08 '16 at 08:25
1

For HiDPI (Mac retina) displays this creates screenshots at half resolution. To fix that bufferedImage.getGraphics().scale(2, 2) before the argFrame.paint(bufferedImage.getGraphics()) call and use new BufferedImage(rec.width*2, rec.height*2, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB) to create the BufferedImage – nyholku Aug 04 '17 at 06:44

score 18 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 09 '13 at 22:17

18

If you'd like to capture all monitors, you can use the following code:

GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
GraphicsDevice[] screens = ge.getScreenDevices();

Rectangle allScreenBounds = new Rectangle();
for (GraphicsDevice screen : screens) {
    Rectangle screenBounds = screen.getDefaultConfiguration().getBounds();

    allScreenBounds.width += screenBounds.width;
    allScreenBounds.height = Math.max(allScreenBounds.height, screenBounds.height);
}

Robot robot = new Robot();
BufferedImage screenShot = robot.createScreenCapture(allScreenBounds);

answered Aug 09 '13 at 22:17

11101101b

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would be better to calculate it [this way](http://stackoverflow.com/a/13380999/446591) – Brad Mace Jul 15 '14 at 19:39
@BradMace That answer solved my problem, thank you for linking it here! – Brian_Entei Nov 19 '22 at 03:16

score 11 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 21 '13 at 15:51

11

public void captureScreen(String fileName) throws Exception {
   Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
   Rectangle screenRectangle = new Rectangle(screenSize);
   Robot robot = new Robot();
   BufferedImage image = robot.createScreenCapture(screenRectangle);
   ImageIO.write(image, "png", new File(fileName));
}

edited Jun 21 '13 at 15:51

jjnguy

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answered Jun 21 '13 at 06:49

user2503881

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 22 '14 at 13:48

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File; 
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import javax.swing.*;  

public class HelloWorldFrame extends JFrame implements ActionListener {

JButton b;
public HelloWorldFrame() {
    this.setVisible(true);
    this.setLayout(null);
    b = new JButton("Click Here");
    b.setBounds(380, 290, 120, 60);
    b.setBackground(Color.red);
    b.setVisible(true);
    b.addActionListener(this);
    add(b);
    setSize(1000, 700);
}
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
    if (e.getSource() == b) 
    {
        this.dispose();
        try {
            Thread.sleep(1000);
            Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(); 
            Dimension d = tk.getScreenSize();
            Rectangle rec = new Rectangle(0, 0, d.width, d.height);  
            Robot ro = new Robot();
            BufferedImage img = ro.createScreenCapture(rec);
            File f = new File("myimage.jpg");//set appropriate path
            ImageIO.write(img, "jpg", f);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    HelloWorldFrame obj = new HelloWorldFrame();
}
}

I did a benchmark and this one is the slowest, also has the greatest loss and biggest file size. Sorry, — Liam Larsen, Jul 01 '17 at 08:47

joe pelletier · Answer 6 · 2015-06-27T15:35:36.470

GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();  
GraphicsDevice[] screens = ge.getScreenDevices();       
Rectangle allScreenBounds = new Rectangle();  
for (GraphicsDevice screen : screens) {  
       Rectangle screenBounds = screen.getDefaultConfiguration().getBounds();        
       allScreenBounds.width += screenBounds.width;  
       allScreenBounds.height = Math.max(allScreenBounds.height, screenBounds.height);
       allScreenBounds.x=Math.min(allScreenBounds.x, screenBounds.x);
       allScreenBounds.y=Math.min(allScreenBounds.y, screenBounds.y);
      } 
Robot robot = new Robot();
BufferedImage bufferedImage = robot.createScreenCapture(allScreenBounds);
File file = new File("C:\\Users\\Joe\\Desktop\\scr.png");
if(!file.exists())
    file.createNewFile();
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
ImageIO.write( bufferedImage, "png", fos );

bufferedImage will contain a full screenshot, this was tested with three monitors

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 29 '17 at 11:24

You can use java.awt.Robot to achieve this task.

below is the code of server, which saves the captured screenshot as image in your Directory.

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.SocketTimeoutException;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ServerApp extends Thread
{
       private ServerSocket serverSocket=null;
       private static Socket server = null;
       private Date date = null;
       private static final String DIR_NAME = "screenshots";

   public ServerApp() throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException, Exception{
       serverSocket = new ServerSocket(61000);
       serverSocket.setSoTimeout(180000);
   }

public void run()
   {
       while(true)
      {
           try
           {
              server = serverSocket.accept();
              date = new Date();
                  DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("_yyMMdd_HHmmss");
              String fileName = server.getInetAddress().getHostName().replace(".", "-");
              System.out.println(fileName);
              BufferedImage img=ImageIO.read(ImageIO.createImageInputStream(server.getInputStream()));
              ImageIO.write(img, "png", new File("D:\\screenshots\\"+fileName+dateFormat.format(date)+".png"));
              System.out.println("Image received!!!!");
              //lblimg.setIcon(img);
          }
         catch(SocketTimeoutException st)
         {
               System.out.println("Socket timed out!"+st.toString());
 //createLogFile("[stocktimeoutexception]"+stExp.getMessage());
                  break;
             }
             catch(IOException e)
             {
                  e.printStackTrace();
                  break;
         }
         catch(Exception ex)
        {
              System.out.println(ex);
        }
      }
   }

   public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException, SQLException, ClassNotFoundException, Exception{
          ServerApp serverApp = new ServerApp();
          serverApp.createDirectory(DIR_NAME);
          Thread thread = new Thread(serverApp);
            thread.start();
   }

private void createDirectory(String dirName) {
    File newDir = new File("D:\\"+dirName);
    if(!newDir.exists()){
        boolean isCreated = newDir.mkdir();
    }
 }
}

And this is Client code which is running on thread and after some minutes it is capturing the screenshot of user screen.

package com.viremp.client;

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.util.Random;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ClientApp implements Runnable {
    private static long nextTime = 0;
    private static ClientApp clientApp = null;
    private String serverName = "192.168.100.18"; //loop back ip
    private int portNo = 61000;
    //private Socket serverSocket = null;

    /**
     * @param args
     * @throws InterruptedException 
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        clientApp = new ClientApp();
        clientApp.getNextFreq();
        Thread thread = new Thread(clientApp);
        thread.start();
    }

    private void getNextFreq() {
        long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        Random random = new Random();
        long value = random.nextInt(180000); //1800000
        nextTime = currentTime + value;
        //return currentTime+value;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        while(true){
            if(nextTime < System.currentTimeMillis()){
                System.out.println(" get screen shot ");
                try {
                    clientApp.sendScreen();
                    clientApp.getNextFreq();
                } catch (AWTException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    System.out.println(" err"+e);
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    e.printStackTrace();
                } catch(Exception e){
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            }
            //System.out.println(" statrted ....");
        }

    }

    private void sendScreen()throws AWTException, IOException {
           Socket serverSocket = new Socket(serverName, portNo);
             Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
             Dimension dimensions = toolkit.getScreenSize();
                 Robot robot = new Robot();  // Robot class 
                 BufferedImage screenshot = robot.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(dimensions));
                 ImageIO.write(screenshot,"png",serverSocket.getOutputStream());
                 serverSocket.close();
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 31 '18 at 13:31

Toolkit returns pixels based on PPI, as a result, a screenshot is not created for the entire screen when using PPI> 100% in Windows. I propose to do this:

DisplayMode displayMode = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getScreenDevices()[0].getDisplayMode();
Rectangle screenRectangle = new Rectangle(displayMode.getWidth(), displayMode.getHeight());
BufferedImage screenShot = new Robot().createScreenCapture(screenRectangle);

Is there a way to take a screenshot using Java and save it to some sort of image?

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