How to use the built-in snipping tool in Windows 11 - no need for third-party tools!

Hi welcome to my series on how to start loving Windows 11 now that it's time for Windows 10 to say bye 👋🏻. Until 14th of October I will explore Windows 11 features and functionality 💗.

Table of content 💖

Why should I use the built-in snipping tool?

How to Use the Built-In Snipping Tool in Windows 11 - how to reach it and what you can do

Edit the snip

Final thoughts

In the fourth blog post in my series on how to fall in love with Windows 11 I want to talk about how to use the built-in snipping tool and what you can do.

Why should I use the built-in snipping tool?

Well, why should you? Earlier the built-in snipping tool lacked functionality but today it's just as good as third-party tools and it's just there ready to use! And I just love using a built-in free tool that requires no installing or different versions, it's just there 😎.

How to Use the Built-In Snipping Tool in Windows 11 - how to reach it and what you can do

You reach the snipping tool by pressing Windows button + Shift + S. You can also reach it by searching for snipping tool and clicking + New. I prefer the shortcut since it makes it possible for me to snip when I'm in my working mood.

There are a range of different things you can do:

Snip an image: Sniping the image, before you snip you can decide if you prefer to snip a rectangle, window, full screen or free shape.

Snip a video: When sniping a video, the only choice is sniping a rectangle. Before you start recording you can decide if you want to include the audio system and/or the microphone. You will not be able to edit the videos in the editor mode after, it will be saved directly. For editing I recommend Clipchamp 🙂.

Perfect screenshot: This is an AI Copilot +PC functionality that helps you crop or resize your snips in a more precise way. No need to retake a snip to get the perfect size or. There should also be some sort of smartness included in an automatic resizing of crop size based on content - I have yet to experience this 🙈. Note! This is in Windows Insider at the moment (this is how you enroll if you like to test new things ➡️➡️ The Windows Insider Program).

Click to do: You can also find Click to do through this shortcut, read more about click to do in this blogpost: How to get started with Microsoft Recall as an end-user.

Color picker: No need to use a third-party tool or website to find that HEX, RGB or HSL code from a color you like. Now you can directly with snipping tool find the color code. When you use this the color code will be copied.

Text extractor: With this feature you can extract text, I don't see a big use case for text but the lovely thing is that it works both on images and videos as well (as you can see in my gif on my background image)! When you've picked this you will get more options such as copy all text, automatically copy all text or remove line breaks. Note! This is in Windows Insider at the moment.

Edit the snip

Ok we have the snip - let's edit it! Every time you make a snip the image will appear in your notifications asking if you want to do more with then snip other than copying in. If you don't see this make sure snipping tool is turned on under your notification settings.

There are a range of different things you can do:

Take a new snip: We have the same options here but we also get a timer, I guess that's needed if you don't use the shortcut 😇.

Draw on the image: There is one normal pen and one highlighter, both with several colors to use.

Eraser: We can erase what we drawn.

Add shapes: We can add different kinds of shapes such as squares, arrows, circles and more. With our without filling. We can also add a few selected emojis.

Crop: We can crop the image if we want.

Edit in Paint: If we need even richer functionality such as adding text or for example an image on top of the snip, we can also choose to edit the snip in Paint.

Save/copy: When we are done we either save the snip or copy it and paste it where it's needed 🙂.

More settings: If you want to adjust more settings you will find the settings under ..., you can change things such as saving copies of the snips, where to save them, add a border to each snip and more. 

Final thoughts

I hope we all can agree on that the built-in snipping tool offers a lot of flexibility and functionality! Now you go ahead and use it 💃🏻💃🏻.

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Others posts in my Windows 11 series:

Why you as an end-user should want Windows 11 right now 💗

How to get started with Microsoft Recall as an end-user

How to move your Windows 11 start menu from the center to the left