HACKER Q&A
📣 lgpants

Why don’t GitHub readme pages include screenshots?


I frequently come across GitHub projects that don’t include any screenshots and the project will contain UI elements. I’m wondering if there is a reason why so many don’t include screenshots?

For example sidebery[1] didn’t have it. I use it and it’s great but it’s hard to get a sense of what it does Without actually showing a screenshot.

1. https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery

  👤 devonnull Accepted Answer ✓
As other commenters posted, maintaining screenshots is a pain. Especially with software that's regularly changing.

That said, there are more than a few GitHub readmes that contain screens. Sometimes quite a few screens. Here's an example: https://github.com/gsantner/markor

👤 gerimate
As someone who's responsible to maintain docs and readmes I try to avoid working with screenshots as there might be some minor UI changes time to time which might be distracting or confusing.
👤 jjgreen
The GitHub repo is mainly for devs, there's a link to the addon page there, it seems reasonable that a dev would know to click on it.