Grabit Launcher

Launch grabit for region screenshots, screen recording, OCR, translation, pins, and uploads from a bar widget, a mode menu, and a control-center shortcut.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	snowballons/grabit
Entries	Bar widget: widget; panels: menu, settings; shortcut: shortcut; services: service, indicator; layer: recording

Requirements

Install grabit, sleep, and xdg-open on PATH.

• grabit does every capture, recording, OCR, translation, pin, and upload. Its config is read and written with grabit set and grabit unset.
• sleep provides the short delay before a capture so a closing panel is not captured.
• xdg-open opens the grabit config directory from the settings panel.

grabit handles the interactive UI (region selector, annotator, recording control bar). The widget and shortcut are thin clients that mirror the published status and drive grabit through the service.

Usage

Add the Grabit widget to a bar in Settings → Bar. Left-click runs the configured default action; right-click opens the mode menu.

Gesture	Action
Left click	Default action (copy, save, or upload)
Right click	Open the mode menu
Middle click	Capture the last region
Scroll up	Fullscreen capture
Scroll down	Window capture

The mode menu offers region copy/save/upload, fullscreen, window, last region, annotate, OCR, OCR + translate, pin to desktop, grab pins, release pins, unpin all, recording, and settings.

Both panels can also be opened from the command line:

noctalia msg panel-toggle snowballons/grabit:menu
noctalia msg panel-toggle snowballons/grabit:settings

The control-center shortcut mirrors the widget: left-click captures or stops an active recording, right-click opens the menu. Add it in Settings → Control center → Shortcuts.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
record_upload	bool	true	Upload a finished recording when an upload service is configured. When off, recordings start with --no-upload.
hide_inactive	bool	false	Hide the bar widget while no capture or recording is active.

Everything else lives in grabit's own config, so the plugin and grabit never hold competing copies. The settings panel edits default_action, service, capture.cursor and recording.cursor, also_save, image format, filename and filename_preset, recording.fps, recording.format, recording.crf, and translate.target.

default_action is grabit's key. A plain left-click on the widget or shortcut sends no action flag, so grabit resolves the action itself; the menu's explicit entries pass their own flag.

IPC

The service accepts events for scripted control:

noctalia msg plugin snowballons/grabit:service all capture copy
noctalia msg plugin snowballons/grabit:service all record
noctalia msg plugin snowballons/grabit:service all pause
noctalia msg plugin snowballons/grabit:service all resume
noctalia msg plugin snowballons/grabit:service all stop

The capture payload is a mode name (default, copy, save, upload, fullscreen, window, last, annotate, ocr, ocr-translate, pin, pin-grab, pin-release, unpin-all) or a table with mode and delay_ms. default passes no action flag, leaving grabit to apply its default_action config. record accepts a table with delay_ms.

Notes

• Processes spawned: grabit (captures, recording, pause, pins, OCR), sleep (capture delay), and xdg-open (config folder). The plugin makes no network requests itself; uploads are done by grabit only when the chosen action uploads.
• Files written: the plugin reads grabit's recording pid file in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and writes grabit config keys through the grabit CLI. Screenshots, recordings, and grabit's own log are written by grabit.
• The plugin only controls recordings it started. grabit --record toggles on the pid file, so starting a recording while one started elsewhere is running would stop that one instead; the service checks for a live grabit --record first and refuses, leaving the external recording alone.
• The recording indicator is a click-through recording layer shown by the indicator service only while recording or paused. The bar widget and shortcut mirror the same state.