The Windows Snipping Tool is a good screenshot tool that covers a lot of use cases already. While third-party screenshot tools, including PicPick or ShareX, are usually better, the Snipping Tool is sufficient for many Windows users.
Microsoft is testing a new feature integration in the Snipping Tool currently. It integrates Bing into the tool. More precisely, it adds an option to run a visual search for content displayed by the Snipping Tool.
To use it, you select Menu > Visual Search with Bing. This opens the Bing search results for the displayed content.
You can give it a try right away. Just visit Bing Images and select the “search using an image” option on the webpage.
Here, you may upload an image or select one of the sample images displayed by Visual Search.
The feature identifies objects and people. Multiple identified objects are selectable and the search results reflect the selection. It is also possible to highlight a specific part of an image to get related content and information about it.
This is the latest in a series of new features that Microsoft baked into the Snipping Tool. Recent additions include support for text recognition among other features.
Visual Search using Copilot
Windows Copilot may display information about the active image on the Windows system. You can upload any image to Copilot or allow Copilot to access Clipboard images.
You’d have to copy the image to the clipboard first, which many screenshot tools support.
The information that Copilot provides is limited, however, and it is not visual, but text-based.
Closing Words
Microsoft continues to integrate Bing, Copilot and AI into Windows and applications. The upcoming feature update for Windows 11 heralds the beginning of AI PCs, at least according to Microsoft.
Snipping Tool users who do not need the feature can safely ignore it. It can be useful to some Snipping Tools users, but a feature like it may work better on mobile devices.
What about you? Which screenshot tool do you prefer?
ALT-PrntScrn works very well for active window capture.
This seems to be just a way for MS to get more info from you and get you to use Bing.
You can revert to the old snipping tool if you still have the files.
You need the files “SnippingTool.exe” (Version 10.0.16299.15 is what I use) and the matching “SnippingTool.exe.mui”.
You replace the former and copy the latter into :\\windows\system32\en-US
You will of course have to dance with the permissions to get this done.