New Features Coming to Snipping Tool and Notepad

Exciting Updates for Windows 10 and 11: Snipping Tool and Notepad Enhancements

Microsoft has unveiled valuable new features in two preview builds for Windows 10 and 11 Insiders, particularly focusing on enhancing the Snipping Tool, the built-in screenshot utility, and Notepad. These updates will be available for testing in the Canary and Dev channels.

Snipping Tool Enhancements

The latest version, 11.2502.18.0, introduces an innovative feature aimed at users who regularly utilize drawing tools. Leveraging this update, the Snipping Tool now enables effortless creation of straight shapes by simply drawing while maintaining a steady hand with a stylus, mouse, or finger.

In this update, we are making improvements to the inking markup experience by introducing draw & hold, which helps you draw neat lines and shapes with ease. To get started, open Snipping Tool and capture a screenshot of any content on your screen. If the image does not automatically open in the app, click on the toast notification to “Mark up and share” your image. Select the pen tool and draw a line, arrow, rectangle, or oval over the image – before letting go of the shape, hold your cursor or pen still for a moment to convert your stroke into a well-formed shape. Resize, move, or adjust your shape as needed before clicking away to let the ink dry.

Additionally, Snipping Tool is enhancing convenience for developers through a revamped protocol launch feature:

For developers, Snipping Tool now supports a new and improved protocol launch experience! App callers can now customize which Snipping Tool capture features are shown when invoked from their experience. The protocol is designed to offer improved flexibility, security, and ease of use, aligning closely with familiar HTTP-based interactions. This shift can make use of the protocol more intuitive for developers, and it expands support for better integration with web technologies.

For more detailed information regarding the Snipping Tool protocol launch, you can refer to the official documentation.

Notepad Features: AI Summaries and Recent Files

Notepad is also receiving noteworthy updates, including AI-driven text summaries and an overview of recent files. The summary feature allows users to condense text by selecting a portion and invoking a summary via the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + M. However, this premium capability is accessible only to subscribers of Microsoft 365 Personal/Family and Copilot Pro.

To get started, select the text you want to summarize, then right-click and choose Summarize, select Summarize from the Copilot menu, or use the Ctrl + M keyboard shortcut. Notepad will generate a summary of the selected text, providing a quick way to condense content. You can experiment with different summary lengths to refine the output.

Moreover, the recent files feature does not require any subscription. Users can easily access recently opened text files by navigating to the File menu and selecting Recent.

These exciting features for both Snipping Tool and Notepad are gradually being rolled out to Windows Insiders. If they are not yet accessible on your device (within the Canary and Dev Channels), please check back periodically as the rollout is being conducted in phases.

For the official announcement, you can read more here.

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