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Install Peek GIF Screen Recorder for Linux Ubuntu

By Sourabh /  Category: How To, Ubuntu

Install Peek GIF Screen Recorder for Linux Ubuntu. How to install animated GIF recorder Peek 1.4.0 on Linux Ubuntu.

Peek makes it easy to create short screencasts of a screen area. It was built for the specific use case of recording screen areas, e.g. for easily showing UI features of your own apps or for showing a bug in bug reports. With Peek, you simply place the Peek window over the area you want to record and press “Record”. Peek is optimized for generating animated GIFs, but you can also directly record to WebM or MP4 if you prefer.

Peek recording itself

Peek is not a general purpose screencast app with extended features but rather focuses on the single task of creating small, silent screencasts of an area of the screen for creating GIF animations or silent WebM or MP4 videos.

Peek runs on X11 or inside a GNOME Shell Wayland session using XWayland. Support for more Wayland desktops might be added in the future.

Install Peek in Ubuntu

You can install the latest versions of Peek from the Ubuntu PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peek-developers/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install peek

If you want to use the latest development version there is also a PPA with daily builds available. Use the repository ppa:peek-developers/daily in the above commands.

For best results:

  • Use a lower frame rate. 10fps is the default and works well, but in many cases you can even get good results with lower framerates.
  • If you have gifski installed you can adjust the GIF quality in the preferences. A lower quality gives a smaller file size at the expense of visual quality (see above).
  • Avoid too much change. If there is heavy animation the frames will differ a lot.
  • Record small areas or use the downsample option to scale the image. The GIF file format is not well suited for high resolution or full-screen recording.
  • Avoid too many colors, since GIF is limited to a 256 color palette per frame. This one is not so much about file size but more about visual quality.
  • If the above suggestions are not suitable for your use case, consider using WebM or MP4 format