How can I take a screenshot in Google Colab using PIL

Question

I am looking to take a screenshot of my screen on Google Colab for use in a screen recorded video, but as the the notebook runs in linux, I am not sure if this is possible.

My code from python on my device is below

from PIL import ImageGrab
img = ImageGrab.grab(bbox= None)

When run on Colab, it returns either OSError: X connection failed: error 5 or ImportError: ImageGrab is macOS and Windows only .

Looking for other options, I first tried mss.mss() , which returned $DISPLAY not set. . I tried setting the display in the method and using os , and neither of which worked.

I then tried gtk.gdk , but I was not able to install and import it properly after trying several methods.

I also tried using pyautogui , but after importing I was not able to connect to a display, and was returned either a DisplayConnectionError or an OSError .

Was there a way to fix any of the errors returned using the methods I listed? Or is there another method that I am not aware of to return the contents of a screen as an image in Colab?

Answer 1

First you need to setup a virtual monitor:

!pip install gym pyvirtualdisplay > /dev/null 2>&1
!apt-get install -y xvfb python-opengl ffmpeg > /dev/null 2>&1

DISPLAY_WIDTH = 1920  
DISPLAY_HEIGHT = 1080

from IPython import display as ipythondisplay
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
display = Display(visible=0, size=(DISPLAY_WIDTH, DISPLAY_HEIGHT))
display.start()

Then install pyscreenshot:

!pip install pyscreenshot
import pyscreenshot as ImageGrab

Finally grab the picture:

frame = np.array(ImageGrab.grab(bbox= None))

In ImageGrab.grab(bbox=(x, y, w, h)) you can specify the size of the screen you want to grab as well.