phw/peek

★ 10,562ValaAudience · developerComplexity · 1/5LicenseSetup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((peek))
    What it does
      Screen recording
      GIF capture
      WebM output
    Use Cases
      Bug reports
      UI demos
      Short clips
    Tech Stack
      Vala
      GStreamer
      FFmpeg
    Install
      Distro packages
      Flatpak
      AppImage

mindmap root((peek)) What it does Screen recording GIF capture WebM output Use Cases Bug reports UI demos Short clips Tech Stack Vala GStreamer FFmpeg Install Distro packages Flatpak AppImage

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Record a small UI area as an animated GIF to attach to a GitHub bug report or issue

USE CASE 2

Capture a short looping screen animation to share in a chat or documentation page without needing a video player

USE CASE 3

Record a silent WebM video clip of a specific screen region for a tutorial or walkthrough

Tech stack

ValaGStreamerFFmpeg

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Project is deprecated, no new features or bug fixes will be released, existing releases remain available.

Free to use, modify, and distribute, but any modified version you share must also be open source under GPL v3 or later.

In plain English

Peek is a Linux screen recorder designed for one specific task: capturing a small area of your screen as an animated GIF or a silent WebM video. You place the Peek window over whatever part of the screen you want to capture, press Record, and when you stop it produces a file you can share. The interface is intentionally minimal, and the tool does not try to be a full-featured screencast application. It is built for situations like demonstrating a UI feature in an app or capturing a bug to include in a bug report, where a short, looping animation is more useful than a long video. GIF is the primary output format because it works everywhere without a video player, though the README acknowledges that GIF files can be large and lower quality than video formats. WebM is also supported as a direct output option. Peek runs on Linux using X11 or inside a GNOME Shell Wayland session via XWayland. It requires a few system libraries including FFmpeg and the GStreamer audio/video plugins. An optional tool called gifski can be installed alongside Peek to improve the quality of the generated GIF files. Installation is available through the official package repositories of many Linux distributions including Arch, Debian, Fedora, and others, as well as through Flatpak and as an AppImage download. The project has been declared deprecated by its maintainer. No new features will be developed and the issue tracker has been closed. The announcement is linked from the README for anyone who wants the details. Existing releases remain available and installable, but the project is no longer actively maintained. Peek was written in Vala, a programming language that compiles to C and is designed for building GNOME applications. It is licensed under GPL v3 or later.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

How do I install Peek on Fedora Linux and record a GIF of a specific window area for a bug report?

Prompt 2

Show me how to install gifski alongside Peek on Ubuntu to get higher-quality GIF output from screen recordings.

Prompt 3

Walk me through installing Peek via Flatpak on a Linux system that does not have it in its package repository.

Prompt 4

What are the best alternatives to Peek now that it is deprecated, for recording screen areas as animated GIFs on Linux?

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