Take a full page screenshot with Firefox on the command-line

I'm running Firefox on a Xvfb in a VPS. What I want to do is to take a full page screenshot of the page.

I can redirect Firefox to particular page using

firefox http://google.com

and take a screenshot (inside X) using ImageMagick

import root -window output.jpg

The problem is, most of the page need scrolling and I can't know the height beforehand.

The other way is to pick a very big height (like 4000px) and then process the image and remove the useless part. But that's unnecessary processing.

I found many Firefox add-ons, but I'm looking for a solution that can be programmed using the Shell Command line.

Edit: I ended up writing my own FireFox extension for doing this.

Solution 1:

The Developer Toolbar GCLI and Shift+F2 shortcut were removed in Firefox version 60. To take a screenshot in 60 or newer:

press Ctrl+Shift+K to open the developer console (⌥ Option+⌘ Command+K on macOS)
type :screenshot or :screenshot --fullpage

Find out more regarding screenshots and other features

For Firefox versions < 60:

Press Shift+F2 or go to Tools > Web Developer > Developer Toolbar to open a command line. Write:

screenshot

and press Enter in order to take a screenshot.

To fully answer the question, you can even save the whole page, not only the visible part of it:

screenshot --fullpage

And to copy the screenshot to clipboard, use --clipboard option:

screenshot --clipboard --fullpage

Firefox 18 changes the way arguments are passed to commands, you have to add "--" before them.

Firefox 88.0 has a new method for taking screenshots. If extensions.screenshots.disabled is set to false in about:config, you can right-click the screen and select Take Screenshot. There's also a screenshot menu button you can add to your menu via customization.

You can find some documentation and the full list of commands here.

_{PS. The screenshots are saved into the downloads directory by default.}

Solution 2:

Update 2018-07-23

As was just pointed out in the comments, this question was about getting a screenshot from the command line. Sorry, I just read over that. So here is the correct answer:

As of Firefox 57 you can create a screenshot in headless mode like this:

firefox -screenshot https://developer.mozilla.com

Solution 3:

I ended up coding a custom solution (Firefox extension) that does this. I think by the time I developed it, the commandline mentioned in enreas wasn't there.

The Firefox extension is CmdShots. It's a good option if you need finer degree of control over the process of taking the screenshot (or you want to do some HTML/JS modifications and image processing).

You can use it and abuse it. I decided to keep it unlicensed, so you are free to play with it as you want.

Solution 4:

I think what you are looking for is a utility which enables you to save a complete page opened in your browser into a png file. Most probably you are looking for a utility like commandlineprint2.

After installing the extension, you just need to type the command:

firefox -print http://google.com -printfile ~/foo.png

Solution 5:

Firefox Screenshots is a new tool that ships with Firefox. It is not a developer tool, it is aimed at end-users of the browser.

To take a screenshot, right-click on an empty space on the page, and choose "Take Screenshot". If you then click "Save full page", it will save the full page, scrolling for you.

_{(source: mozilla.net)}