Record screencasts with Peek on Gnome
In the Can

Lead Image © Roman Fedin, 123RF.com
A screencast shows what happens on the desktop. Peek lets you create screencasts in the blink of an eye and export them to popular formats.
As the famous saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But how many words can a video save you? A million, maybe? In many situations, a short screencast (i.e., a video of desktop events) gives a far better explanation of a problem or an action than wordy text with images. A wide range of tools is available for this purpose.
The range extends from SimpleScreenRecorder [1] to recordMyDesktop [2]. Compared with these candidates, the fairly recent Peek [3] has a very small feature set, but the program is not trying to compete with the more established applications. Originally, it simply recorded the desktop as a GIF, thus producing videos that were easy to embed into web pages. However, Peek now also supports more traditional video formats such as WebM and MP4.
Recording the Desktop
In terms of the interface, Peek is deliberately oriented on the LICEcap [4] screencast tool for Windows. The program shows a scalable transparent window that is always in the foreground on top of all your other applications. Everything inside the window frame, is grabbed as a video by the software when you click Record. After pressing Stop (Figure 1), Peek immediately saves the results on the hard disk.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs Transitions to Linux
Another major organization has decided to kick Microsoft Windows and Office to the curb in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.