Microsoft 'Snip' Screen Capturing Tool Lets You Annotate Screenshots

It's 2015, and Microsoft has just released a new screen capturing application - Snip. Most recent versions of Windows come with a screen capturing application called Snipping Tool that lets you grab screenshots. Furthermore, most keyboards also have a dedicated key called "Print Screen" which also offers a similar feature. So, why a new tool for screen capturing?

Because Snip is smart - the app aims to improve your screen grabbing experience on Windows computers while also providing option to annotate on them and even embed audio to it. The idea is to make your screenshots more information rich. With annotations and audio, you could make a screen tutorial, for example.

The second key feature is accessibility. Microsoft Snip floats at the bottom of the screen to allow you to quickly take a screenshot of the whole screen or a particular region. It also gives you a quick option to grab images from a webcam or a drawing.

As soon as you're done with the annotations and embedding an audio file to the capture, Microsoft Snip automatically saves the file to an MP4 (video format) file. The video can be easily embedded to websites. Microsoft also gives you an option to host the video on its servers (OneDrive), and a link that you can disseminate among your friends.

Being in the beta testing phase, Microsoft Snip may feel a little buggy, be warned. It can be installed on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and all the versions of Microsoft's desktop operating system that came in between, and downloaded from Microsoft's Garage's website.