ImageGrab.grab() doesn't ignore windows layered on top (tooltip, pop-ups, etc.)

[a-alak]

What did you do?

Run PIL.ImageGrab.grab() without arguments.

What did you expect to happen?

Until now this has not included pop-ups and tooltips in the screenshot.
I just updated to windows 11.
I can see in issue #2569 that it is the expected behavior to not include layered windows, and that the option to include them was added, but not as a default.

I suppose the underlying API has changed in windows 11.
Anyone that can share some knowledge about this?

What are your OS, Python and Pillow versions?

• OS: Windows 11
• Python: 3.10.5
• Pillow: 10.4.0

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Pillow 10.4.0
Python 3.10.5 (tags/v3.10.5:f377153, Jun  6 2022, 16:14:13) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Python executable is C:\Users\Public\SPEDA\env\Scripts\python.exe
Environment Python files loaded from C:\Users\Public\SPEDA\env
System Python files loaded from C:\Program Files\Python310
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Python Pillow modules loaded from C:\Users\Public\SPEDA\env\lib\site-packages\PIL
Binary Pillow modules loaded from C:\Users\Public\SPEDA\env\lib\site-packages\PIL
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--- PIL CORE support ok, compiled for 10.4.0
--- TKINTER support ok, loaded 8.6
--- FREETYPE2 support ok, loaded 2.13.2
--- LITTLECMS2 support ok, loaded 2.16
--- WEBP support ok, loaded 1.4.0
--- WEBP Transparency support ok
--- WEBPMUX support ok
--- WEBP Animation support ok
--- JPEG support ok, compiled for libjpeg-turbo 3.0.3
--- OPENJPEG (JPEG2000) support ok, loaded 2.5.2
--- ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support ok, loaded 1.3.1
--- LIBTIFF support ok, loaded 4.6.0
*** RAQM (Bidirectional Text) support not installed
*** LIBIMAGEQUANT (Quantization method) support not installed
*** XCB (X protocol) support not installed
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[radarhere]

Could you attach an image to show what you're seeing?

[a-alak]

Yeah sorry, what i tested on was sensitive data, so i could not share.
But here is an alternative example with the file explorer.
Example 1 shows a tooltip with the url of the Outlook shortcut.
Usually i would have expected the tooltip not to show in the screenshot like example 2.

[radarhere]

@nulano did you have any insight here?

[nulano]

I can confirm that tooltips are included with both include_layered_windows=False and include_layered_windows=True on Win 11 Pro version 23H2, but also on Win 10 Home version 22H2.

I just updated to windows 11.

Do you know which build of Win 10 you were running before you upgraded?

[a-alak]

Unfortunately not.
And honestly I am more challenged by popups than tool tips, and I cannot show you an example pic of the pop up.
It is running on a hospital system, where there often is weird pop up messages. They did not use to show up in ImageGrab, but now they do.

[radarhere]

Do these popups come from the same application that you are trying to see in your screenshot, or a different one? I'm wondering if the request of #4415 could be a potential solution.

[a-alak]

I think that might solve it!
It is popups from another application.
Some kind of background internal messaging service, that I can't disable.

[radarhere]

I've created #8516 to resolve this by adding a handle argument to ImageGrab.grab() that accepts a HDC.

With that, you could do something like

import win32gui
from PIL import ImageGrab
window = win32gui.FindWindow(None, "Insert window title here")
handle = win32gui.GetDC(window)
ImageGrab.grab(handle=handle)

[a-alak]

Amazing! Thank you @radarhere!
Any idea when you can expect a release including PR #8516, how does pillow release cycles work?
Sorry if the question is stupid.

[radarhere]

Pillow releases occur every three months - the next one is scheduled for January 2nd.

If you would like to try out the PR in the meantime, I've put together a wheel - pillow-11.1.0.dev0-cp310-cp310-win_amd64.whl.zip

[a-alak]

Amazing! Thanks @radarhere!

I am curious whether the tooltip issue can be solved as well?
It is a minor problem for us, but I am just going to leave the issue open for that.
If it is not possible or not something that people want in pillow I will close the issue 😇