Fastest way to take a screenshot with python on windows

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Learn more about Teams Sound like what you realy want are screen videos, a la CamStudio on Sourceforge. What's the use case? – Simon Hibbs Aug 27, 2010 at 16:35

You could use win32 APIs directly .

First give the focus to the App that you want to take screenshot of. link text

Win32 API can help with the screenshot:

import win32gui
import win32ui
import win32con
w = 1920 # set this
h = 1080 # set this
bmpfilenamename = "out.bmp" #set this
hwnd = win32gui.FindWindow(None, windowname)
wDC = win32gui.GetWindowDC(hwnd)
dcObj=win32ui.CreateDCFromHandle(wDC)
cDC=dcObj.CreateCompatibleDC()
dataBitMap = win32ui.CreateBitmap()
dataBitMap.CreateCompatibleBitmap(dcObj, w, h)
cDC.SelectObject(dataBitMap)
cDC.BitBlt((0,0),(w, h) , dcObj, (0,0), win32con.SRCCOPY)
dataBitMap.SaveBitmapFile(cDC, bmpfilenamename)
# Free Resources
dcObj.DeleteDC()
cDC.DeleteDC()
win32gui.ReleaseDC(hwnd, wDC)
win32gui.DeleteObject(dataBitMap.GetHandle())
                VERY IMPORTANT, as this recently bit me in the ass: you HAVE TO delete/release all the DCs created by this, or after taking ~90 images, you won't be able to anymore. in this case, dcObj.DeleteDC(); cDC.DeleteDC(); win32gui.ReleaseDC(hwnd, wDC)
– Claudiu
                Sep 1, 2010 at 15:39
                As a followup from @Claudiu's comment (which is indeed necessary as he notes), I found win32gui.DeleteObject(dataBitMap.GetHandle()) also necessary.  I've edited the answer to include both comments.
– jedwards
                Jul 15, 2014 at 5:19
You can try my newly created project DXcam: I think for raw speed it's the fastest out there (in python, and without going too deep into the rabbit hole). It's originally created for a deep learning pipeline for FPS games where the higher FPS you get the better. Plus I (am trying to) design it to be user-friendly:
For a screenshot just do
import dxcam
camera = dxcam.create()
frame = camera.grab()  # full screen
frame = camera.grab(region=(left, top, right, bottom))  # region
For screen capturing:
camera.start(target_fps=60)  # threaded
for i in range(1000):
    image = camera.get_latest_frame()  # Will block until new frame available
camera.stop()
I copied the part of the benchmarks section from the readme:
The benchmarks is conducted through 5 trials on my 240hz monitor with a constant 240hz rendering rate synced w/the monitor (using blurbuster ufo test).
You can read more about the details here: https://github.com/ra1nty/DXcam
                this is an interesting library! please get that on main PyPI. their testing repo is just for testing.
– Christoph Rackwitz
                Jul 15, 2022 at 13:06
                FWIW this was much slower than mss for my application, but the guarantee of every frame being new is nice.
– Eric M.
                Sep 16, 2022 at 8:32
with mss.mss() as sct:
    monitor = {"top": 160, "left": 160, "width": 160, "height": 135}
    img_array = np.array(sct.grab(monitor))
    # Do whatever you want...
                Ty for sharing! Using other methods at 1440p I got 13fps, but with mss I was able to achieve 20fps. It's fast for sure :)
– Eric Carmichael
                Nov 3, 2021 at 6:07
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