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[Quick Fix] The “Edit” Option Disabled in Shutter in Ubuntu 18.04

Last updated: April 22, 2024

shutter screenshot

After installed my favorite screenshot tool Shutter in Ubuntu 18.04, I found that the Edit button is greyed out. And this quick tip is going to show you how to re-enable the editing feature in Shutter.

To re-enable the “Edit” option, Shutter requires libgoo-canvas-perl library which is not available in Ubuntu 18.04 main archive. As a workaround, you can grab the package, as well as dependencies, from Ubuntu 17.10’s repository.

And here are the links to the packages you need to install (64-bit only since Ubuntu 18.04 dropped 32-bit support):

1. Download and double-click to install the libgoocanvas-common package:

Download libgoocanvas-common

2. Download and install libgoocanvas3 package:

Download libgoocanvas3

Either use Gdebi package installer (available in Ubuntu Software) or run command in terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T) to install the package:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb; sudo apt-get -f install

 

3. Finally download & install libgoo-canvas-perl package:

Download libgoo-canvas-perl

Also install the package via Gdebi or terminal command, since Ubuntu Software doesn’t solve dependencies automatically:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/libgoo-canvas-perl_0.06-2ubuntu3_amd64.deb; sudo apt-get -f install

To apply changes, kill Shutter process or restart your computer!

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    45 responses to [Quick Fix] The “Edit” Option Disabled in Shutter in Ubuntu 18.04

    1. Alvaro Urbáez April 17, 2018 at 8:50 pm

      You’ve saved me, man.. Thanks..

    2. Stefan April 23, 2018 at 8:37 pm

      Thanks that worked on my new precision 7720 with ubuntu 18.04. However I needed indeed to reboot the laptop before the menu showed up

      • Besmir Zanaj September 6, 2018 at 4:38 am

        just run this and start shutter again

        # ps auxw | grep shutter | grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’ | xargs kill -9

        • sylvan September 18, 2018 at 3:26 pm

          or maybe just “killall shutter” or for more flexibility try the “pkill” command.

          and for future reference, it is almost never necessary to mix grep and awk since awk does matching as well, like: ps auxw | awk ‘/shutter/ && $11!=”awk” {print $2}’

    3. Stefan April 23, 2018 at 8:38 pm

      There is only one thing left to do. The icons belonging to the editor are shown very tiny on my 4K screen. Can hardly see them. Scaling in gnome is already set to 200%
      Any suggestions?
      Stefan

      • urs May 20, 2018 at 2:43 am

        Nobody seems to bother about the tiny icons on the bar on the left, but it really is a problem. The Qt5 Configuration Tool does not seem to help either with the icon size here. Is there really no way to fix this problem, e.g. on Ubuntu-Mate?

        • Ji m May 24, 2018 at 3:02 pm

          Try running command in terminal and answer yes when it prompts:

          sudo apt install libappindicator-dev && sudo cpan -i Gtk2::AppIndicator

          And restart Shutter to apply changes.

    4. Pandu Aji April 27, 2018 at 11:30 am

      Thank you! Its help me a lots. Shutter is a reason why i love ubuntu with screenshot and built in editor.

    5. Matt April 27, 2018 at 12:57 pm

      Very cool! Made my day! THX!

    6. patrick April 30, 2018 at 10:41 am

      I have to say this is a very good solution

    7. Lonnie Best April 30, 2018 at 12:26 pm

      Thanks a bunch; we’ve been searching for a work-around:
      https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1765726

      Thanks for detailing the steps so nicely.

    8. Ron May 2, 2018 at 1:33 am

      Nice write up! Thank you!!

    9. Tanner May 2, 2018 at 5:09 pm

      Thanks for the article! Really nice after the 18.04 upgrade!!!

    10. Vidal Ruiz May 4, 2018 at 1:47 pm

      Thank you !

    11. Manky Gitt May 7, 2018 at 10:50 pm

      Terrific! 18.04 can now remain. I was close to rolling back because of this issue. Shutter is an essential tool in my work.

    12. Micha May 9, 2018 at 6:03 am

      Thanks a lot – this worked like a charm. Wondering why something important like that got forgotten.

    13. Walter DeMoss May 9, 2018 at 7:32 am

      Thanks for taking the time to write that up so well. Clear and effective!!!

    14. Jaime Cruz May 9, 2018 at 4:43 pm

      Muchas gracias por tu aporte!
      —
      Thanks for this post!

    15. pinguy May 11, 2018 at 4:29 pm

      This doesn’t work anymore.

      • Ji m May 12, 2018 at 2:40 pm

        Please tell more about the problem, since the edit option is working well in my case.

        • shuttersad May 12, 2018 at 7:33 pm

          Same here.
          Here it happens,

          user@len-lin:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i libgoo-canvas-perl_0.06-2ubuntu3_amd64.deb
          Selecting previously unselected package libgoo-canvas-perl.
          (Reading database … 363406 files and directories currently installed.)
          Preparing to unpack libgoo-canvas-perl_0.06-2ubuntu3_amd64.deb …
          Unpacking libgoo-canvas-perl (0.06-2ubuntu3) …
          dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libgoo-canvas-perl:
          libgoo-canvas-perl depends on libgoocanvas3 (>= 0.15); however:
          Package libgoocanvas3 is not installed.
          libgoo-canvas-perl depends on libextutils-depends-perl; however:
          Package libextutils-depends-perl is not installed.
          libgoo-canvas-perl depends on libextutils-pkgconfig-perl; however:
          Package libextutils-pkgconfig-perl is not installed.

          dpkg: error processing package libgoo-canvas-perl (–install):
          dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
          Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2) …
          Errors were encountered while processing:
          libgoo-canvas-perl
          user@len-lin:~/Downloads$ sudo apt-get install -f
          Reading package lists… Done
          Building dependency tree
          Reading state information… Done
          Correcting dependencies… Done
          The following packages will be REMOVED:
          libgoo-canvas-perl
          0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
          1 not fully installed or removed.
          After this operation, 455 kB disk space will be freed.
          Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
          (Reading database … 363490 files and directories currently installed.)
          Removing libgoo-canvas-perl (0.06-2ubuntu3) …
          Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2) …

          • Ji m May 13, 2018 at 12:14 pm

            It prompted that “Package libgoocanvas3 is not installed”.

            Please download and install the three packages in turns.

            First libgoocanvas-common, then libgoocanvas3, and finally install the libgoo-canvas-perl package.

    16. Javier Cuevas May 28, 2018 at 1:14 am

      Can’t find the same packages for amd 32 bits, can you help me?

    17. ard May 28, 2018 at 10:16 am

      thanks a lot,Ji m

      just now I discovered your quick fix,
      applied it as per your detailed description and it is working fine.

      You make my work a lot easier !
      note: since Ubuntu 18.04 installation , I had to use pixlr.com/edit for making edit to my screen shots.

    18. Charlie June 21, 2018 at 4:31 pm

      This useful information also works on Linux Mint 19 that suffers with the same problem.

      Thanks

    19. Jack Reacher June 29, 2018 at 4:14 am

      Thanks!!!

    20. Grateful Shutter User July 15, 2018 at 2:19 am

      Works on Linux Mint 19 XFCE! Many thanks!

    21. Casey July 17, 2018 at 3:51 pm

      Super helpful on 18.04! Thank you.

    22. Nathalia July 18, 2018 at 5:45 pm

      It worked! Thank you very much!

    23. Valentin July 23, 2018 at 5:53 pm

      hola instale en el orden indicado, pero Shutter aun no me deja editar, me dice ” se necesita instalar Goo::Canvas/Libgoo-canvas-perl para poder usar…”.Alguna sugerencia ( tengo uibuntu 18.04 lts)
      Gracias

      • Fausto September 22, 2018 at 8:52 am

        El orden es:

        sudo dpkg -i Descargas/libgoocanvas-common_1.0.0-1_all.deb
        sudo dpkg -i Descargas/libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb
        sudo dpkg -i Descargas/libgoo-canvas-perl_0.06-2ubuntu3_amd64.deb
        sudo apt-get -f install

    24. Max July 27, 2018 at 3:32 pm

      Thank you!

    25. Matt September 1, 2018 at 5:38 pm

      You are the best! It worked perfectly

    26. Robert September 6, 2018 at 12:43 pm

      You Rock!!! Thanks for solving this issue. They need to fix that and get these packages or rebuild this feature to not use them.

    27. Jimmy September 25, 2018 at 9:24 am

      Awesome, thank you so much for this!! (Xubuntu 18.04.1 LTS)

    28. Al October 27, 2018 at 10:54 pm

      Thank you!

    29. mozia November 30, 2018 at 10:05 am

      thanks a lot man. accurate and precise.

    30. Alonso Quiroz December 6, 2018 at 5:18 pm

      Awesome!
      It worked just fine! Thanks!

    31. Anton December 11, 2018 at 9:07 am

      Thanks! You’ve saved so much time for me…

    32. Igor Polevoy December 18, 2018 at 2:45 pm

      Saved me time, thanks!

    33. Bhaskar S January 5, 2019 at 10:14 pm

      Thank you very much for this fix. Is it okay for me to refer your link in my blog ?

    34. MMGud January 6, 2019 at 8:05 pm

      It finally worked for me.

      Being a windows user, the “kill shutter” just meant to me to close the open window.

      I now found out that either I had to shutdown and restart my pc, or use the “kill shutter” command from the terminal window. I did try a restart, but that did not do it. The kill command did it for me.

      It’s those little things that drive us old windows users nuts.

    35. LEONARDO DE FABRIS LOPES January 14, 2019 at 3:14 pm

      thanks a lot It works