Install Shotwell

1. Flatpak

1.1. Stable releases

Get Shotwell from flathub!

1.2. Nightly

This flatpak allows you to follow the current development branch closely. It is updated on a nightly base with whatever is on the branch. Please follow the instructions on Apps/Nightly and follow the steps there, using org.gnome.Shotwell as the application id.

2. Ubuntu Binaries

Shotwell should ship as the default photo manager since Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr).

3. From Source

3.1. Getting the dependencies

3.1.1. Ubuntu

Shotwell 0.18 is supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) and later. You can install dependencies for Shotwell like this:

$ sudo apt-get build-dep shotwell
$ sudo apt-get install yelp-tools appstream-util libgcr-3-dev libgdata-dev libwebp-dev (for recent git versions)

In order to get the best video experience with Shotwell, it might be helpful to install gstreamer1.0-libav; this enables GStreamer to decode many video formats from modern cameras.

3.1.2. Fedora

Shotwell 0.18 is supported on Fedora 18 and later. You can install dependencies for Shotwell like this:

$ sudo dnf builddep shotwell
$ pkcon install libappstream-glib-devel yelp-tools gcr-devel libgdata-devel libwebp-devel (for recent git versions)

or, explicitly using

$ pkcon install desktop-file-utils gettext libappstream-glib-devel json-glib-devel atk-devel \
gtk3-devel gnome-doc-utils gtk3-devel libgee-devel libgudev-devel \
libgexiv2-devel glib2-devel glib2-devel glib2-devel gstreamer1-devel \
gstreamer1-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel \
gtk3-devel libexif-devel libgphoto2-devel LibRaw-devel libsoup-devel \
libxml2-devel rest-devel sqlite-devel webkitgtk4-devel vala-devel \
libappstream-glib-devel yelp-tools gcr-devel libgdata-devel libwebp-devel

3.1.3. Others

Shotwell's dependencies include:

• gee-0.8 (0.8.0)

• gexiv2 (0.5)

• gio-unix-2.0 (2.20)

• glib-2.0 (2.33)

• gmodule-2.0 (2.24.0)

• gstreamer-1.0

• gstreamer-base-1.0
• gstreamer-pbutils-1.0

• gtk+-3.0 (3.12.0 or later)

• gudev-1.0 (145)

• libexif (0.6.16)

• libgphoto2 (2.5.1 or later) (Note that 2.4.6 has a bug that prevents Shotwell from fetching EXIF metadata before importing a photo.)

• libraw (0.13.2)

• libsoup-2.4 (2.26.0)

• libxml-2.0 (2.6.32)

• m4 (1.4.13)

• sqlite3 (3.5.9)

• vala (0.20.1)

• webkit2gtk-4.0 (2.12.0)

• desktop-file-utils (0.13 or higher)

• Yelp tools

• GNOME crypto UI library gcr (3.20)
• Appstream utils

• libgdata

3.1.3.1. For development releases / master (0.31.x)

• libchamplain
• optionally: opencv 4 (for face detection and recognition)

3.2. Download the source

There are two ways to download the Shotwell source code:

• Download the source tarball: recommended for a stable release

• For the latest code, check out the source from git:

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/shotwell.git

3.3. Build and Install

To build and install Shotwell, go to the directory where you unpacked or checked out the source code, and type the following commands:

$ meson build
$ ninja -C build
# ninja -C build install

which is the preferred way of building Shotwell now.

By default, Shotwell will install in /usr/local. The configure script can customize the prefix directory. Run ./configure --help for instructions and other installation options.

You need to execute make install as root (i.e. sudo make install) if installing to system directories. (NOT recomended!)

3.4. Running Shotwell

You may execute Shotwell directly from its build directory by typing:

$ ninja -C build data/gsettings/gschemas.compiled
$ ./build/src/shotwell

The ninja command above only needs to be issued once.