shot-scraper

A CLI utility for taking screenshots of websites, recording video demos and scraping sites using JavaScript

For background on this project see shot-scraper: automated screenshots for documentation, built on Playwright.

Documentation

Get started with GitHub Actions

To get started without installing any software, use the shot-scraper-template template to create your own GitHub repository which takes screenshots of a page using shot-scraper. See Instantly create a GitHub repository to take screenshots of a web page for details.

Quick installation

You can install the shot-scraper CLI tool using pip:

pip install shot-scraper
# Now install the browser it needs:
shot-scraper install

Taking your first screenshot

You can take a screenshot of a web page like this:

shot-scraper https://datasette.io/

This will create a screenshot in a file called datasette-io.png.

Many more options are available, see Taking a screenshot for details.

Examples

The shot-scraper-demo repository uses this tool to capture recently spotted owls in El Granada, CA according to this page, and to generate an annotated screenshot illustrating a Datasette feature as described in my blog.
The Datasette Documentation uses screenshots taken by shot-scraper running in the simonw/datasette-screenshots GitHub repository, described in detail in Automating screenshots for the Datasette documentation using shot-scraper.
Ben Welsh built @newshomepages, a Twitter bot that uses shot-scraper and GitHub Actions to take screenshots of news website homepages and publish them to Twitter. The code for that lives in palewire/news-homepages.
scrape-hacker-news-by-domain uses shot-scraper javascript to scrape a web page. See Scraping web pages from the command-line with shot-scraper for details of how this works.
Reuters uses shot-scraper to generate regularly updating data dashboards for email newsletters.

Release files for shot-scraper 1.12

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for shot-scraper 1.12
File	Size	Uploaded
shot_scraper-1.12.tar.gz	21.8 kB	Sep 14, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for shot-scraper 1.12
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
shot_scraper-1.12-py3-none-any.whl 23.5 kB Sep 14, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 45.2 kB

Release files / shot_scraper-1.12.tar.gz

Download URL	shot_scraper-1.12.tar.gz
Size	21.8 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`2baed3e5510d759de5eac0a1ef554d0d321d03a561ccbfd3af8c7b29edfe244b`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`9b3c34a1ace0396f0e48a3122cbba241cd3bb5bf9dfe5717a73b01a03ead0843`
Upload date	Sep 14, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	Yes
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`

Provenance

Provenance describes where a file came from. On PyPI, provenance is shared via attestations, which provide a verifiable record of the build or publishing details. View details, limitations and caveats.

Identity

Publishing platform: GitHub Actions
Publishing repository: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper
Publishing commit: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/tree/760c11449fd3ceb2132ca1e67c70a53bde32b56b

Workflow

Publishing configuration: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/blob/760c11449fd3ceb2132ca1e67c70a53bde32b56b/.github/workflows/publish.yml
Publishing logs: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/actions/runs/34791198341/attempts/1

Artifact

Subject: shot_scraper-1.12.tar.gz
SHA-256 checksum: 2baed3e5510d759de5eac0a1ef554d0d321d03a561ccbfd3af8c7b29edfe244b Verifying attestations

Release files / shot_scraper-1.12-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	shot_scraper-1.12-py3-none-any.whl
Size	23.5 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`823ad46a5a5db2cc284c8d292735dc492c24adabf0595e00e6fe4b3c847e7a40`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`cf0ac240582ce12257c5957f37bc34554273cb41c1a4a043a0d4746460f2f16b`
Upload date	Sep 14, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	Yes
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`

Provenance

Identity

Publishing platform: GitHub Actions
Publishing repository: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper
Publishing commit: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/tree/760c11449fd3ceb2132ca1e67c70a53bde32b56b

Workflow

Publishing configuration: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/blob/760c11449fd3ceb2132ca1e67c70a53bde32b56b/.github/workflows/publish.yml
Publishing logs: github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/actions/runs/34791198341/attempts/1

Artifact

Subject: shot_scraper-1.12-py3-none-any.whl
SHA-256 checksum: 823ad46a5a5db2cc284c8d292735dc492c24adabf0595e00e6fe4b3c847e7a40 Verifying attestations