If you have read any of the instructional posts on this blog, you’ve noticed my articles are packed with screenshots as illustrations. When I’m writing on a Windows computer, I rely on the included Snipping Tool to quickly create and annotate screenshots for my posts. Some readers may have the next iteration of Snipping Tool, Snip & Sketch, instead. The functionality is similar, but the screenshots in this article are from Snipping Tool.
Activate Snipping Tool
The keyboard shortcut to start the utility is Windows logo key 
+ Shift + S.
You can also set the print screen button to open the snipping tool by default.
Or, you can open the Window menu and search for “snip.” It may also be called “Snip & Sketch.”
I have added a shortcut to Snipping Tool on my taskbar for easy access:
If you’d like to save it to your taskbar, open it, then right-click the Snipping Tool icon at the bottom of your screen and select “Pin to taskbar.”
Snipping Tool Options
Because Snipping Tool automatically gets out of the way when you take a screenshot, I was unable to get an image of the top toolbar. The image below is from Microsoft’s website.
In addition to screenshots, Snipping Tool can capture a screen recording. To use this feature, click the video camera icon.
The menu to the right of the video camera icon gives the following options for the snip shape:
- Rectangle – click and drag the mouse to define the snip. Let go of the button to create the image.
- Window – take a snip of the window on top
- Full screen – include everything you see on your screen
- Free form – snip in whatever bizarre shape you’d like. Here’s an example where I started the snip and just wiggled the mouse around:
The timer option has been very helpful for me. I often try to capture menus that disappear as soon as you click something else on the screen. Using the timer, I can set a delay that gives me time to open the menu before the screen freezes for the snip.
The menu (three dots) contains options for operational defaults, but honestly, the first time I explored it was for this article. This tool is ready to go without any additional configuration.
Editing Screenshots
After you capture an image snip, you can:
- Write or draw on or around it by selecting the Pen or Highlighter buttons
- Add shapes or emojis to the snip by selecting the Shapes button (more on this below)
- Select Eraser to remove the lines or shapes you’ve added
- Crop the image by selecting the Image crop button
- Select Text actions button to extract, copy, or redact the desired text from the snip
- Select Undo or Redo to undo or redo your annotations
- Open the image in Paint for additional edits
- Save the image
- Copy the image
The shapes menu has a submenu:
Use this to select the shape and the color of its fill and outline.
If you created a video snip, you can add captions with the Clipchamp option:
Summary
Native Windows screen capture has come a long way since the print screen option was added. Use the Snipping Tool/Snip and Sketch to quickly and easily create screenshots and short screen recordings for annotation and sharing.
