sss_cli
sss_cli (binary: sss) is the flagship screenshot tool. Pick a region, a window, or a monitor; annotate it; save or copy. Wayland and X11 first-class; macOS via the native ScreenCaptureKit path.
Multi-monitor, no seams
--area drags across your whole virtual desktop — pull a rectangle from one monitor to another and the captured PNG stitches the frames together at the right scale, no visible cut. Works on Wayland (via wlr-screencopy per output + virtual-desktop math), X11 (RANDR 1.5 GetMonitors) and macOS (CGGetActiveDisplayList).
At a glance
- Three target modes: screen, window, area — each with an interactive picker or a direct selector.
- Annotation overlay: shapes, arrows, text, pen, blur, pipette.
- Optional OCR layer (
oar-ocr) to copy text directly from images. - Compositing options: cursor on/off, decoration on/off, border on/off.
- Backends auto-detected:
wayland,portal,x11,windows,macos.
When to use it
| Goal | Flag combination |
|---|---|
| Region select with editor | sss --area |
| Window picker | sss --window |
| Whole screen, no UI | sss --screen --current |
| Force portal backend | sss --capture-backend portal |
| Disable OCR | sss --ocr=false |
OCR
The annotation overlay can pipe the captured (or selected) region through an OCR engine and hand the recognized text straight back to the clipboard. Powered by sss_ocr with hardware-aware defaults (CPU / CUDA / TensorRT / CoreML / DirectML / OpenVINO / WebGPU).
Disable with --ocr=false or pin a backend with --ocr-ep cuda|tensorrt|coreml|directml|openvino|webgpu.
Walk through the getting started guide next, or jump to flags for the full reference.
pages
In this section
Getting started
Install sss, take your first annotated screenshot in under a minute.
Flags
Complete CLI reference for sss — every flag, type, and default.
Configuration
TOML layout, import semantics, and override precedence.
Examples
Real-world sss invocations: region capture, window picker, OCR copy, scripted clipboard.