Since Window 7, Microsoft has been including an incredibly handy tool with its operating system: Snipping Tool. According to Microsoft, the easiest way to make a copy of something is to take a snapshot of the screen, and that’s exactly what the Snipping Tool allows you to do.
In this article, we describe what the Snipping Tool does and how to use it, and we also list many Snipping Tool Mac alternatives.
I will talk completely and deeply about using the snipping tool and snipping tool shortcut. And I will try to resolve your all the queries related to using snipping too and Snipping tool Features. This is a complete guide for using snipping tool, so whether you are a Windows or MAC user I hope you will find this guide helpful. Snipping Tools for iPad| Snipping Tools iPad is an amazing Snipping app. Download Snipping Tools for iPad Free. Snipping Tools iOS is a quite simple application, which lets the user take screenshots of any user-defined area of the screen. In the market, there is more similar application is available in that most of the apps designed with plenty of customization settings, but while comparing. With certain versions of Microsoft Windows there is a free tool called Snipping Tool. This tool can capture screenshots. Where to find Snipping Tool in Windows: Snipping tool is only included with Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Steps for Using the Windows Snipping Tool Step 1: Click ‘Start’ present towards the left hand bottom most corner of the screen. Step 2: Type ‘Snipping Tool’ in the search box and then click on the result. In order to use the snipping tools for Mac, Windows and smartphone, Snagit is another solution to get the desired screenshot. Tipard Screen capture is the ultimate software to capture screen, video and audio files of your computer, you can always snip the desired files.
Snipping Tool Under Microscope
The idiom “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially applicable in today’s digital age. Sharing of images has become incredibly easy, and much of what we do every day takes place on a computer screen. As such, people naturally want to capture what they write, see, create, and do for a myriad of different reasons.
To make screenshot-taking easier for users, Microsoft has created Snipping Tool. To access this tool, select the Start button, type snipping tool in the search box on the taskbar, and then select Snipping Tool from the list of results.
A small window will appear on your screen with four snipping modes:
- Free-form snip: this option allows you to draw a free-form shape around an object and save it as an image file.
- Rectangular snip: this option allows you to drag the cursor around an object to form a rectangle and save it as an image file.
- Window snip: this option allows you to select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, and save it as an image file.
- Full-screen snip: this option captures the entire screen and saves it as an image file.
Other features of Snipping Tool include the option to set a delay as well as the option to annotate your snips by selecting the Pen or Highlighter buttons. Snipping Tool also supports a number of keyboard shortcuts:
- Alt + M: choose a snipping mode.
- Alt + N: create a new snip in the same mode as the last one.
- Shift + arrow keys: moves the cursor to select a rectangular snip area.
- Alt + D: delays capture by 1-5 seconds.
- Ctrl + C: copies the snip to clipboard.
- Ctrl +: saves the snip.
- Ctrl + PrtScn: captures the entire screen, including the open menu.
As you can see, Snipping Tool is quite powerful for such a small utility that many users are not even aware of. Unfortunately, we have bad news for Windows users who wonder how to use Snipping Tool on Mac: Apple’s operating system doesn’t come with this useful application. But it comes with another screenshot-taking tool, called Grab, and you can think of it as Snipping Tool for Mac.
Snipping Tool for Mac: Grab
Grab is a Mac Snipping Tool alternative that makes it possible to take screenshots of your screen and save them as image files. Just like Snipping Tool for Windows, Grab has several screen-capture modes, and it also supports keyboard shortcuts. Best of all, there’s no need to look for Snipping Tool download for Mac links as Grab comes included with all recent versions of macOS.
Snipping Tool Mac Download
To access Grab, you can either:
- Open it from the Utilities folder under Applications.
- Type /Applications/Utilities/Grab.app in Finder.
- Open Launchpad → Other → Grab.
- Open Spotlight and type in Grab.
By default, Grab saves screenshots in the PNG image file format. PNG is the most widely used lossless image compression format on the Internet, and it has a number of advantages over other lossless image compression formats. The problem with the PNG file format is that it produces somewhat large files. Fortunately, Grab allows you to change the default file format to JPG, TIFF, GIF, and PDF formats.
- To change it to JPG, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg” without the quotation marks.
- To change it to TIFF, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type tiff” without the quotation marks.
- To change it to GIF, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type gif” without the quotation marks.
- To change it to PDF, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf” without the quotation marks.
- To change it back to PNG, open Terminal and type in “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png” without the quotation marks.
Okay, so you have Grab open, configured, and ready, but how do you take a picture of your screen or a part of it? You have several options:
- Grab → Capture → Selection: using this option, you can capture a specific region of your screen by dragging a selection box around.
- Shift + Command + A: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the selection option.
- Grab → Capture → Window: using this option, you can capture a screenshot of a window that you select.
- Shift + Command + W: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the window-capture option.
- Grap → Capture → Screen: using this option, you can capture a screenshot of your whole screen.
- Command + Z: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the screen-capture option.
- Grab → Capture → Timed Screen: using this option, you can start a 10-second timer, select a part of your screen, and then take a screenshot.
- Shift + Command + Z: this shortcut provides an alternative way how to trigger the timed screen-capture option.
More Snipping Tool Mac Alternatives
If you would prefer even simpler alternative to Snipping Tool for Mac than Grab, you’ll be pleased to know that macOS comes with not one but three such alternatives:
- Command + Shift + 3: captures a screenshot of your entire screen.
- Command + Shift + 4: turns the cursor into a crosshair, allowing you to select which portion of your screen you would like to capture.
- Command + Shift + 4 + Space: after pressing the space bar, the crosshair turns into a little camera icon, allowing you to move over any open window to take a screenshot of it.
All screenshots taken using these three shortcuts are saved to your desktop. You can also press control to save the screenshots to your clipboard instead, which is useful if you intend to paste them into other applications anyway.
Greenshot
Greenshot is an advanced screenshot-taking tool with built-in OCR capabilities. Just like Snipping Tool for Windows, Greenshot allows you to create screenshots of a selected region, window, or entire screen. It can even capture complete web pages from Internet Explorer without any addons. You can easily annotate, highlight, or obfuscate, the screenshots you take with Greenshot using the application itself and export them in various ways. Greenshot is completely free, open source, and it runs on both macOS and Windows.
LightShot
LightShot is a Mac Snipping Tool alternative and arguably the fastest way how to take a customizable screenshot. The application features a simple and intuitive user interface, which allows you to select any area on your desktop and take its screenshot with just two button-clicks. You can then share your screenshots with others by saving them to your computer or uploading them to LightShot’s servers. LightShot comes with an intuitive yet powerful screenshot editor, so you don’t have to leave the application just to highlight a part of a screenshot or add an annotation.
Snagit
Snagit is more than yet another Snipping Tool for Mac: it’s a full-featured screen-capture software with built-in advanced image editing and screen recording capabilities. The target audience of this powerful application is content creators, educators, business people, and really anyone who wants to add visuals to communicate clearly and be more engaging. With Snagit, you can capture your entire desktop, region, window, or scrolling screen. It takes just a few clicks to make complex edits right within the application, and Snagit’s user interface is so intuitive that using it is a pleasure.
Recover Deleted Screenshots on Mac
Disk Drill
Disk Drill isn’t a Snipping Tool alternative for Mac computers — it’s something even better. With Disk Drill, you can recover all common and not-so-common image file formats, so you’ll never lose any of your screenshots, pictures, videos, music, documents, or any other files since Disk Drill supports the recovery of over 200 file formats.
You can download Disk Drill for free and use it without any expert knowledge, and there are several extra reasons why you should definitely do so because it comes with extra free disk tools that can find duplicates on your hard drive, backup your data, or monitor the health of your hard drive, among many other things.
Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery
Disk Drill has been successfully used to recover important files by countless professional and home users alike, establishing itself as the most accessible and reliable data recovery solutions for macOS and Windows.
Snipping Tool is a utility coming with Windows Vista and later which allows taking screenshots on Windows. It has various capture modes including full-screen, a selected region, free form, an open window, etc. The screenshots can be taken by dragging or clicking the mouse on a specific region as per the requirements. The captured images will be saved as a PNG, GIF, or JPEG file in the selected export folder. In addition, the snipping tool can be also used as an image editor for editing the captured screenshots. But it is not advanced as professional image editing programs such as Photoshop.
Ways to Get into Snipping tool
To access the snipping tool, there are several methods varies based on the version of Windows OS. Let’s have a look at them.
How to access snipping tool in Windows Vista
Getting into the snipping tool in Windows Vista is quite easy. You just have to follow the instructions given below. If you can’t find the snip screen capture tool in there, check out the following section.
- Click on the Start Menu icon.
- Go to All Programs.
- Click on the Accessories folder.
- There you can see the Snipping Tool option.
- Clicking on it will bring the snipping tool.
Activate snipping tool in Vista
Some Windows Vista versions such as basic will not have the snipping tool enabled by default. You have to manually activate it from the control panel. To do this, follow these steps.
- Open Control Panel either from the desktop icon or from the start menu.
- Click on Programs option.
- Then on Program and Features.
- Click Turn Windows features on or off option on the left panel.
- Click Continue if the Windows prompted for the action.
- This is where the real thing happens. You will see a list of available features hidden from you. Scroll through the list and check the box next to “Tablet PC Optional Components” option.
- Finally, click OK.
- That’s it, you’ve successfully enabled the snipping tool in Windows Vista.
Now, follow the steps given in the previous section to access snipping tool in your Vista.
How to open Snipping Tool in Windows 7
A little different from the Vista, the Windows 7 also has simple steps for getting into the snipping tool.
- Click on the Start button.
- Type “Snipping Tool.”
- You will see the snipping tool option shown up there. Click on it.
- It will access the snipping tool.
How to run Snipping Tool in Windows 8 or 8.1
Both Windows 8 and 8.1 versions has the same steps for accessing the snip screenshot tool. Follow these steps.
- Click on the Start.
- Enter “Snipping Tool.”
- Click on the shown snipping tool icon.
Open Snipping Tool in Windows 10
To open snipping tool in Windows 10, these are the steps.
- Click on Search.
- Type in “Snipping Tool” in the search box.
- Click on the Snipping Tool icon which showed in there.
Now you know the meaning of snipping tool. So, don’t wait. Go and snip it.
Frequently asked questions about Snipping Tool in Windows
Here are some of the most frequently searched queries about the snipping tool in Windows. Having a look at them will help you solve many of your doubts.
Snipping tool shortcut
Even the snipping tool for capturing Windows screen comes with a very user-friendly interface, there may be some situations where you have to use some screenshot shortcuts with it. So, the Microsoft developers have included several shortcuts with their handy utility. To easily take a screenshot using the snipping tool in Windows, just press the Win+PrtScn keys together. The screen will flash for a second which means your screenshot is successfully taken. Note that in some keyboards, especially in mini keyboards, the “Fn” (Function) key may be needed to invoke the “Print Screen” button. So in such keyboards, also press that alongside these keys.
Another useful shortcut is the Ctrl+PrtScn buttons which will work instead of the “New” button on the snipping tool window. This will only work with the snipping tool running on the screen. Instead of the regular mouse cursor, this shortcut will bring the crosshair which could be used for capturing screenshots.
There is no need to download the snipping tool as an extra utility or software. Most of the or all Windows versions from the Vista will have this feature by default. As mentioned in the previous sections, you have to activate this option in Windows Vista Basic version from the control panel. In all other versions, you could find it from the start menu.
Snipping tool windows 8
What Is The Snipping Tool For Mac
In Windows 8 too, there is no difference in the process or the usage. Everything will work fine like in any other versions of the Windows. Even the screenshots will be same as mentioned in the previous sections. You don’t have to download anything extra for this.
How to use snipping tool?
The usage of the snipping tool is described very well in our previous article on taking screenshots on Windows. Have a look at it to find out the step by step tutorial to use snipping tool without any problems. Alternatively, watch the following video for a live tutorial.
Snipping tool for mac
There is no inbuilt option namely “snipping tool” available on the Mac Osx operating system. Instead, they are coming with a function namely Grab Utility tool. You can find out the usage of the tool in our article on capturing screenshot on Mac. However, there maybe some external applications coming with the same name as the Windows snipping tool. But they can’t be considered as the official replacement for the snipping tool on Windows.
Where is my snipping tool windows 10?
It is thoroughly described in the above section. Just navigate to your start and search for the snipping tool. You will find the option. Clicking on it will open snipping tool in Windows 10. Nevertheless to say that the steps are also same.
Is snipping tool a complete screenshot software?
No. It is not. The snipping tool can be only considered as a basic solution to print your Windows screen. If you need a professional software for the purpose, you better try some third-party applications such as Snagit.
That’s the complete answer to your question, What is Snipping tool in Windows.