Microsoft is giving Snipping Tool a major OCR upgrade in Windows 11

Snipping Tool is one of the most useful apps to be found in Windows 11, making light work of grabbing on-screen content. Primarily concerned with taking screenshots, it has developed over the years to include a handy OCR component for extracting text.

And now this feature is in line for an upgrade. Microsoft is improving the text extraction capabilities of Snipping Tool so that text can be grabbed without the need to take a screenshot first.

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If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’re a PowerToys user. This collection of add-on utilities has included the Text Extractor module for a while, and it seems that Microsoft has taken the decision to essentially integrate this into Snipping Tool.

But just what does this mean?

In short, it means a massively simplified and accelerated workflow for grabbing text from your screen.

Gone is the need to take a screenshot and run it through OCR; instead, you can use a new keyboard shortcut to extract the text directly from what you see on screen. News of the upcoming feature was shared by PhantomOfEarth on X:

Snipping Tool is getting a fullscreen OCR text extractor that's essentially the PowerToys tool, inbox -- making use of the better OCR models used by Snipping Tool! Here's a demo.

Lets you copy text without having to take a screenshot to do so, Win+Shift+T will also be available. pic.twitter.com/zWteElK725

— phantomofearth ⛄ (@phantomofearth) February 20, 2025

Anyone who has used Text Extractor in PowerToys will not only know what to expect, but will know how impressive and useful it is. Soon it will be available as a baked-in feature of Windows. Watch this space.

Image credit: rokas91 / depositphotos