Eight open source free web screenshot/recording tools

In PPT presentations, academic research, web design, archiving, data extraction and other scenarios, we often need to take screenshots of some web page elements or content as our materials. Web screenshot software is convenient for capturing and recording the visual content of the website and is a valuable tool for collecting materials.

The following list collects some excellent open source and free web screenshot tools.

1.EyeWitness

Source code: https://github.com/RedSiege/EyeWitness

EyeWitness is designed to take screenshots of websites by providing server header information and identifying default credentials when possible.

2. GoWitness

Source code: https://github.com/sensepost/gowitness

GoWitness is a website screenshot program written in Golang. It uses Chrome Headless, generates screenshots of web interfaces through the command line, and processes the results with a report viewer. Supports Linux, macOS, and Windows.

3.TimeCat

Source code: https://github.com/oct16/TimeCat

Official website: https://timecatjs.com/

TimeCat is a completely open source web page recording tool. The generated files are not real videos, but they can be played like real videos, perfectly restoring the user's operating behaviors in the browser.

The TimeCat project is mainly divided into two main modules: Recorder and Player, which are responsible for recording action data and restoring action data respectively.

Supported browsers include:

Chrome plug-in download address: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/timecat-chrome/jgnkkambbdmhfdbdbkljlenddlbplhal

4. Capture Website

https://github.com/sindresorhus/capture-website

capture-website is a tool that can call Chrome in the background to capture website screenshots. It provides API functions for capturing screenshots and saving them to files or cache.

5. Website Shot

https://github.com/Flowko/website-shot

Website Shot is an open source cross-platform screenshot application developed with JS/Vue framework based on nodejs and nuxtjs. It can capture screenshots of web pages, but it cannot take screenshots of websites that require identity authentication, such as personal banking pages, email inboxes, or other pages that require you to log in to view, and you may need to use custom js to paypass.

The application can be easily installed using Docker.

 docker pull flowko1/website-shotdocker run -it -d -p 3000:3000 flowko1/website-shot# to enable password protection | to disabled it set PASSWORD_PROTECT to 0# default password is admin# you'll notice a password field on the homepage, make sure to add the password there as welldocker run -it -d -p 3000:3000 -e PASSWORD_PROTECT=1 -e PASSWORD=yourpassword flowko1/website-shot br

6. Firescreen (Firefox add-on)

Download address: https://sourceforge.net/projects/firescreen/

Firescreen is a Firefox add-on that allows instant installation, supports full web page screenshots, provides instant downloading and setting file names, etc.

7. Pageres

Source code: https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres

Download address: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pageres.mirror/

Pageres is a tool that supports capturing website screenshots in various resolutions, making it easy to ensure the responsiveness of your website. It is fast and can generate 100 screenshots from 10 different websites in under a minute.

It can also render SVG images. Linux users may need to enable the system sandbox to avoid the "No sandbox available!" error.

Pageres offers options like delaying screenshots, applying custom CSS or JavaScript, and setting a transparent background color. It can also use popular resolutions from w3counter.

Key Features:

• Delayed capture of screenshots
• Crop to a set height
• Applying custom CSS to a web page
• Specify some CSS or the path to a CSS file
• Applying custom JavaScript to web pages
• Capture a specific DOM element matching a CSS selector
• Simulate a preference for dark color schemes

8. WebScreenshot

https://github.com/maaaaz/webscreenshot

WebScreenshot is a simple open source script that uses the "url-to-image" script to capture screenshots of a list of websites.

Key Features:

• Use "deferred rendering" of images for ajax request resources
• Fully functional on Windows and Linux systems
• Cookies and custom HTTP headers definition support for PhantomJS renderer
• Terminates unresponsive processes after a user-definable timeout
• Accepts multiple formats as input targets
• Customize screenshot size (width, height), format and quality
• Set options for PhantomJS, such as: ignore ssl errors, define proxy, proxy authentication, HTTP basic authentication, etc.
• Support for multiple renderers
• Embed screenshot URL in image (requires ImageMagick)