There’s no shortage of screenshot tools for Windows, and I used to rely on ShareX for most of my screenshotting on my PC for a long time. Even before that, back when I used IRC, I used to use services like puush to send images to people. Now, though, I've fallen back on Snipping Tool, and even though I know there are alternatives that are better on a technical level, Snipping Tool is simply perfect for most of my use cases. Here's why I haven't switched back to ShareX (or any of the others) and why you may not have either.

4 It's already built into Windows

This one is obvious, but I quite like the simplicity of Snipping Tool being built into Windows. It's always there, and no matter whether I'm using another machine or I've done a fresh install, I can rely on it when I need to quickly take a screenshot and paste it somewhere.

With that comes the simplicity of keeping my Windows installation to a minimum. I already ran Win11Debloat on it, and most of the applications installed on my PC are related to games and recreation rather than work. It's a pretty bare minimum install in that regard, and I like to keep it that way.

3 Keep it simple

Everything is in sight

Snipping Tool is excruciatingly simple. I don't need to annotate my images, upload them, or apply any post-processing. Pretty much every single screenshot I take is immediately pasted into a Steam Chat, a Discord chat, or any other messaging service that I'm using at the time. In that sense, I don't even need to open Snipping Tool, as I just press Windows, Shift, and S to take a screenshot that's automatically copied to my clipboard.

While I'm aware that other screenshotting tools are capable of that, too, I don't really feel the need to bother installing another application for it. When 90% of my screenshotting is just highlighting an area, sending it to a friend, and then forgetting about it, I don't really see the need to use an alternative application to do the same thing. Even when I do need to make changes to an image, most items that I'd need to access are in sight the moment after I take the screenshot.

2 Snipping Tool has OCR now

It's come a long way

Tools like ShareX still retained one significant advantage for quite a while, and that was Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Now, that's built into Snipping Tool, and in a recent update, you don't even need to save the image before you use it. Simply highlight a section to take a screenshot, and an option at the bottom for OCR can be clicked to then highlight text to be copied out of the image.

While I typically use the PowerToys Text Extractor utility for anything involving basic text recognition, I've found Snipping Tool's to be more accurate and that it supports more languages. Snipping Tool, in general, has come a long way over the years, with the ability to record your screen or draw on your screenshots after you take them. While it used to be a pretty poor screenshot tool (which led to the rise of alternatives), nowadays, it's actually pretty good.

1 It doesn't try to do too much

No feature creep

Every feature Snipping Tool has added over the years has made sense, and that's a pretty big deal in an age where applications are seemingly loaded with every feature under the sun in order to cast a wider net of potential users. I don't care about automation or making GIFs, and I imagine quite a lot of users don't, either.

All of that isn't to disparage applications that implement those features, but as a former ShareX user, I preferred to switch to something simpler. That's why I gave Snipping Tool a try and was quite surprised to learn that it had significantly improved over the years. It's completely out of the way until I need it, and updates are automatic as opposed to requiring user intervention. It's a small thing, but it just makes it feel nicer when I don't even need to worry about updating to get new features.

Snipping Tool is the best built-in Windows program

Maybe this is a bold claim, but I genuinely believe that Snipping Tool is one of the best built-in Windows programs. It's not trying to sell you anything, it's not laying it on thick with new features that don't make sense, and it just works as-is. Microsoft still pushes updates that significantly improve the experience, and for people who want more, it's easy to get an alternative. I know there are people out there who want all of the bells and whistles that a tool like ShareX offers, but for anyone using it who doesn't use most of the additional features, maybe give Snipping Tool another try.