Since Vista, Microsoft has included a free screen-capture utility with the Windows operating system: Snipping Tool, a replacement for the good, old PrtScr+Paint option. Still, people who frequently took screenshots found it lacking. Over several years and name changes (Screen Sketch, Snip & Sketch), Snipping Tool has improved, greatly increasing its usefulness through new video capture and optical character recognition features. It's a perfectly fine option for anyone with basic screen-capture needs. However, bloggers, vloggers, presenters, and anyone else who requires more advanced functionality, such as scrolling capture or support for a wide array of file formats, should consider ScreenPal or Snagit, our Editors' Choice winners for free and paid screen-capture apps, respectively.

Easy Content Capture

Snipping Tool is one of the easiest screen-capture utilities to come by if you work or play on a PC, as it is built into Windows 11. You can quickly launch the Snipping Tool at any time by pressing the Windows key + Shift + S. Alternatively, you can assign it to the Print Screen (PrtScn) hotkey. Are you still a Windows 10 user? You can use Snipping Tool, too, despite Microsoft stating it would eventually be moved to the tech graveyard.

(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)

Snipping Tool sports Windows 11's simple, flat design, and the toolbar offers several useful capture options. For example, you can capture an entire screen, a window, or a custom portion of the screen using either the rectangle or freeform tools. In a nice touch, a 3- or 10-second delay gave me just enough time to adjust what appeared on the screen before the capture. Snipping Tool can't scroll windows, an extremely useful feature for capturing webpages and other deep screenshots. For that functionality, check out Snipping Tool's rivals, Ashampoo Snap, ScreenPal, and Snagit.

Editing Images and Video

Once you've snipped something, the editor opens, giving you more helpful tools to modify the image. With a mouse or touch screen, you can draw over your capture with one of 25 pen or pencil thicknesses and apply one of 30 colors. In testing, the ruler and protractor tools kept my changes symmetrical. Additionally, I cropped images, added outlines to screen grabs, and used a highlighter to mark up captures. It's all very easy to do.

Snipping Tool's text extractor tool lets you pull text from screenshots, an OCR feature previously reserved for Ashampoo Snap, ScreenPal, and Snagit. The app also has a useful option that automatically adds captures to the clipboard for easy pasting. Naturally, Snipping Tool lets you open and edit image files already on your desktop. Make a mistake? The Undo button is your friend.

Once you've finished editing an image, you can share it via email, OneNote, and Twitter/X. Snipping Tool only exports edited images in JPG, GIF, or PNG format, which is on the low side. ScreenPal offers those format options, plus BMP and TIFF. Snagit tops Snipping Tool and ScreenPal by letting you export files in an impressive 19 formats, including the less common MHT, RAS, and WHX.

Years of updates have brought Snipping Tool closer in line to its more feature-rich rivals. Most notably, the app now supports video recording, and it's easy to use. In testing, I simply switched from capturing screenshots to capturing video and selected the desired portion of the screen to record. You can also record audio synced to the video using a microphone. This is great for, say, teachers who want a simple way to narrate a class diagram or a coach sketching a play.

Similar to Snagit, Snipping Tool limited my video exports to MP4 files, which was a bit disappointing. ScreenPal, however, supports AVI, FLV, and MP4. To perform any video editing beyond basic trimming, I had to use an external service, such as Clipchamp, Microsoft's free in-browser video editor. Snagit and ScreenPal both support picture-in-picture for recording your screen and webcam at once, but Snipping Tool does not.

(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)

Windows Snipping Tool vs. Everything Else

The video features go a long way toward making Snipping Tool an app most people can rely on for everyday captures. Still, unless your screenshot needs are incredibly basic, you should probably opt for a different, more advanced tool.

For instance, a paid ScreenPal subscription ($4 per month) lets you generate select content, such as transcriptions and summaries, via AI tools. Those features help justify ScreenPal's low-cost paid subscription, but the lack of them isn't a Snipping Tool deal-breaker if you only need a simple, free screen-capture app.

Likewise, Snagit offers a host of helpful features for $39 per year. It lets you scroll and capture entire webpages, create and share custom templates, and use AI to intelligently and automatically blur sensitive information. Premium features like that, along with little touches like saving your last few images for easy retrieval, put Snagit over the top. Snagit and ScreenPal both have useful companion mobile apps for working and memeing on the go, whereas Snipping Tool lacks one.

Need easy access to your screenshots across different devices? Snipping Tool automatically saves original and edited screenshots to OneDrive, smartly keeping everything in the Microsoft ecosystem. The other services handle file syncing differently. ScreenPal offers its own integrated cloud storage. Snagit, on the other hand, relies on third-party cloud storage, such as Dropbox and Google Drive.