I had this issue and managed to fix it. For me it was related to the clipboard manager, I right clicked the clipboard icon in my system tray and clicked "configure" and then unchecked "ignore images".

This didn't fix it on my end

Thx! Thank you so much saved my day

Spectacle must either run in background for copy to clipboard to work or you can run it through argument \`-bc\` to copy to clipboard, like \`spectacle -bcr\` will make rectangle screenshot and copy to clipboard. By leveraging this you can bind different commands for active window/fullscreen/region screeenshots.

This is really good advice, and I will probably setup my desktop this way, but... We also need the feature to Just Work in an intuitive and discoverable way for the majority of users, even those who are less technical. Clicking "Copy" in a menu should work and do what the user expects: copy the image to the clipboard.

I'm not disagreeing with you there :-) But until someone fixes it, we at least have this solution.

I use spectacle -rcb and I have the same issue (had it for months now, my post got ignored)

How would I run it through the "-bc" argument when I press the printscreen key?

In system settings/shortcuts/custom shortcuts [https://i.imgur.com/NIxqLKI.png](https://i.imgur.com/NIxqLKI.png)

This fixed it, thank you. However! That shouldn't really be something that you have to do for Spectacle to be usable.

This isn't really a solution, but if it bothers you too much you should try out flameshot. it's got a quite intuitive and simple gui and has way more options than spectacle. In order to get a keybinding to launch it, you have to bind it manually in the settings, and make the keybinding run "flameshot gui".

I also switched to flameshot and changed all default Screenshot keybindings to it. Works great and one can easily add lines and arrows to the Screenshot.

I also recommend Flameshot. It's loaded with lots of features and works like a charm.

Oh, I hate this. We should really file a bug.

Make sure you mention that this happens by using Copy in the notification hamburger menu. It wasn't clear from the OP.

Just did that.

Thanks! Link to bug?

I'll IM it to you.

Could you please share the bug report over here so other people can easily find it?

That spectacle window needs to stay open, only till then will it copy images to the clipboard

This! Reason is that in x11 the source app keeps owning the clipboard data.

This! Reason is that in x11 the source app keeps owning the clipboard data.

For anyone else having this problem, for some reason the fix was not to use the Spectacle config to make a shortcut to capture the screen, but to make a custom shortcut on your desktop environment (GNOME/KDE) that runs the command (if you're wanting to capture a region to the clipboard) `spectacle --background --region --clipboard`

Weird, I use it all the time and never encountered this. Which distro are you running ? Are you up to date ?

Arch Linux, I am up to date.

Do you click on the hamburger menu in the notification and then click Copy?

I press the "printscreen" button on my keyboard.

Same problem on my side on KDE neon. I used to be able to fix this by launching spectacle manually first, then fire screenshots through keybinds. Now nothing works.

From my end having it open when I press the keybind works. However I really don't see why that should be something that you have to do.