How to change default Gnome Screenshot savings folder

Saving screenshots to a different directory in GNOME 3

Gnome environment has a lot of built-in widget and one of the most useful is gnome-screenshot. It takes a screenshot when you hit the Print Screen key on your keyboard and save it to the defaults /Pictures folder.

For me, screenshot savings in that folder is annoying because several times I took images of my desktop for post on social or blogs and, after few seconds, I’ll delete them. In my /Pictures folder, I have many other folders (Not an organized photos and pictures library, just a pure caos!) and all the times I want to delete the screenshot images, this folder takes time to render and I also risk a chance to delete something wrong.

Best solution is moving the screenshots folder to a different directory. In older versions of Gnome, this was accomplished by editing gnome-screenshot’s dconf configuration.

In dconf-editor go to org/gnome/gnome-screenshot
and type in your savings folder in the auto-save-directory value.
With absolute path, like: /home/user/Downloads

Since Gnome 3.8+ does not use gnome-screenshot and due to Bug 699642, it is useless to change this settings and you need to create a new shortcut to replace the default one.

So, in Gnome Control Center:

• Keyboard settings

• Shortcuts

• Screenshots

And disabled the shortcuts referred to:

- Print

- Alt+Print

- Shift+Print

To disable a shortcut, select it and use Backspace key.

Then select the Custom Shortcuts tab and make 3 new shortcuts for the same behaviors.
In the command places, put respectively:

sh -c '/home/user/.scripts/ssfull.sh'

sh -c '/home/user/.scripts/sswin.sh'

sh -c '/home/user/.scripts/ssarea.sh'

In your Home folder at /home/user/, make a new secret directory called .scripts and create 3 script file in it.

#!/bin/bash
##ssfull script
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S)
gnome-screenshot -f /home/user/Downloads/Screenshot-$DATE.png

#!/bin/bash
##sswin script
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S)
gnome-screenshot -w -f /home/user/Downloads/Screenshot-$DATE.png

#!/bin/bash
##ssarea script
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S)
gnome-screenshot -a -f /home/user/Downloads/Screenshot-$DATE.png

Make all scripts executables through:

sudo chmod a+x '/home/user/.scripts/ssfull.sh'

sudo chmod a+x '/home/user/.scripts/sswin.sh'

sudo chmod a+x '/home/user/.scripts/ssarea.sh'

Now, the Print Screen and the others behaviors point savings to the /Downloads folder or to the folder that you choose.

Enjoy it!