5 reasons you should use the Windows Snipping Tool instead of third-party apps

There are a ton of alternatives to the Windows Snipping Tool out there, providing various ways to capture your screen and annotate it. But as great as these alternatives can be, I still believe in using the Snipping Tool for all your screen capturing needs.

I’ve written about how the app has become so much better on Windows 11, and I meant it. I love the Snipping Tool now, and I recommend everyone to check it out. Let me tell you why.

5 It’s right there

Why go out of your way to install more stuff?

I don’t know about you, but I like my computers running as smoothly as possible, and installing unnecessary apps is not something I like to do. So when you have a solution like Snipping Tool built right into the operating system, why would you go out of your way to add more junk to your PC?

The Snipping Tool is preinstalled on Windows 11, and it stays up to date automatically. It also comes with a system-wide keyboard shortcut (Windows + Shift + S) or you can even use it with just the Print Screen key. No need to come up with your own shortcut and remember it with a third-party app.

4 Easy annotation

Easy to use, but very capable

Most screenshot apps come with plenty of tools for annotating or drawing on your screenshots, but the Snipping Tool has one of the cleanest UIs around, and it’s really easy to get to grips with. Despite that, it does have a very capable editor, allowing you to draw arrows, boxes, and more. What’s more you can easily change the fill and outline colors of shapes to anything you want, including changing the transparency of the color.

What’s more, you can add things like emoji or use handwriting to write up some text or draw your own doodles. There’s also a highlighter tool, and it’s all easily accessible within the toolbar. Need more advanced edits? Snipping Tool also gives you a quick link to edit your image in Paint, where you have a lot more options.

3 Visual search

Find similar images

Have you ever run into an image and had no idea what or where it was, wanting to find out more information? Well, an image search can help, and the Snipping Tool makes that easier than ever. Sure, uploading an image to Google or Bing has been a thing for years and years, but the hassle of downloading an image, then going to the search engine and uploading it there can be a bit tiresome.

Whenever you take a screenshot with the Snipping Tool, you can simply right-click it and choose Visual search with Bing to find images like that one, or learn more information about what you’re looking at. It’s pretty handy.

2 Text recognition

Copy or redact text easily

One of the coolest parts about the Snipping Tool, in my opinion, is the relatively recent ability to recognize text in a screenshot. This is actually a huge deal for me, especially paired with the ability to redact text. Many times, I need to take screenshots of things that include my email address, and the quick redact feature in Snipping Tool can automatically hide sensitive information like emails and phone numbers. Plus, you can manually redact anything you want, too.

But Snipping Tool also lets you simply copy the text you see in a screenshot, and that too is super helpful. Imagine you’re looking at a scanned document or book. It’s all text, but because it’s a simple scanned PDF, it’s just an image, so you can’t do anything with the text on screen unless you rewrite it manually. Snipping Tool can recognize that text and let you easily copy it, saving you time. Microsoft is even working on a feature that lets you copy entire tables from a screenshot and paste them in Excel.

More recently, Microsoft has also added QR code recognition, so you can open links from QR codes easily without using your phone’s camera.

1 It records your screen, too

Forget the cumbersome screen recorders

The Snipping Tool used to be just for capturing images, but these days, it’s evolved into a bona fide screen recorder. It used to be extremely hard to find a good, free screen recording tool, but now, it’s just right here. You can record your screen and your system audio, as well as your microphone audio, which can be helpful if you’re recording guides for someone else.

What’s great about the Snipping Tool is that it’s super easy to use. You just switch to video mode, select the area to record, change the audio settings, and you’re golden. Other tools do exist that can do screen recording, but many of them are cumbersome to set up properly or may not have a good free option that doesn’t have a watermark or something. The Snipping Tool has almost no downsides for basic screen recording.

It’s hard to ask for much more

All in all, the Snipping Tool is a fantastic all-in-one solution for screen capturing, whether it’s a static image or a video. It does its job very well, and it’s just built right into Windows, no need to install or set anything up. You really have nothing to lose by trying it out, and I think you’ll find there’s really no reason to look any further than that.