Is there a way to take a screenshot using Java and save it to some sort of image?

java image screenshot
jjnguy picture jjnguy · Sep 12, 2008 · Viewed 127.2k times · Source

Simple as the title states: Can you use only Java commands to take a screenshot and save it? Or, do I need to use an OS specific program to take the screenshot and then grab it off the clipboard?

Answer

David Citron picture David Citron · Sep 12, 2008

Believe it or not, you can actually use java.awt.Robot to "create an image containing pixels read from the screen." You can then write that image to a file on disk.

I just tried it, and the whole thing ends up like:

Rectangle screenRect = new Rectangle(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize());
BufferedImage capture = new Robot().createScreenCapture(screenRect);
ImageIO.write(capture, "bmp", new File(args[0]));

NOTE: This will only capture the primary monitor. See GraphicsConfiguration for multi-monitor support.

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