

If you think Print Screen is rather oddly named, by the way – you might be wondering why it isn’t called Screenshot or Grab Screen, for example – well, the answer is that way back when, the key literally printed the contents of the screen (sending it straight to your printer). Microsoft may just scrap the idea completely, especially if there’s negative feedback from testers (or indeed a lack of positive feedback, perhaps). The worry for some folks could be that eventually, Microsoft will discard this old way of working entirely…Īt any rate, there’s no guarantee that any change applied in testing will make it to the release version of Windows 11.

So, this is kind of a double-pronged move to help less tech-savvy types know what’s happening when hitting PrtScn.įortunately, with the ability to change the Print Screen behavior present in Settings, Microsoft is giving those more familiar with the way Windows works the choice to stick with the current scheme of things. And moreover, the user has the ability to edit that grab there and then in the tool, quickly cropping it, for example, before saving the image. What Microsoft is doing in popping up the Snipping Tool is giving a firm indication that the screen has been grabbed. But there’s no indication to those completely new to Windows that anything has happened – no prompt, message, or even a little sound effect to indicate something has occurred when the key is pressed. Grizzled veterans of the computing world will, of course, be very familiar with the fact that if you press Print Screen, the OS will copy an image of the screen to the clipboard you can then paste elsewhere. What’s the big idea here, then? Well, it’s really about making Windows 11 more friendly to complete newcomers. In that case, Windows 11 will revert to its default behavior of copying the screenshot directly to the clipboard.Īnalysis: Making Windows more user-friendly This is nestling in the Settings panel, under Accessibility > Keyboard, where there’s a ‘Use the Print Screen key to open Snipping Tool’ slider – and you can just switch this off. However, as mentioned at the outset, there’s good news for those who hate this idea, and that’s the presence of a switch in the beta build to turn off this option.

It’s quite a small change, but with a potentially more sizeable impact on the workflow of many people.
