The 'Print screen" button has a place on almost every keyboard in the world. But how useful is it on Windows? Not very—an image of your entire screen is rarely the best way to save something in the age of the Snipping Tool and myriad other screen-sharing solutions. Microsoft is poised to make the first major change to Print Screen functionality in years. In the latest Insider builds of Windows 11, the Print Screen button activates the built-in Snipping Tool.
There is already an option to do this in Windows. To activate it, you'll have to dive into the accessibility settings under Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard. Scroll down about halfway, and there's an option to tie Print Screen to the Snipping Tool. However, few, if any, people venture into the menu that also contains Sticky Keys and on-screen keyboard shortcuts.
When the KB5025310 update rolls out, Windows 11 will default to linking Print Screen with the Snipping Tool. The change really can't come soon enough. The standard Print Screen functionality has needed an upgrade for ages. A few decades ago, most personal computers had such small, low-resolution monitors that capturing the whole screen was perfectly reasonable. However, in this age of 4K displays and multiple monitors, dumping a full screenshot into the clipboard is rarely helpful.
The appetite for this change has existed for years, even if Microsoft is only now addressing it in Windows. Numerous third-party apps plug into the Print Screen button—I've been using an app called Greenshot to do this for over a decade. Microsoft's own OneDrive also offers to usurp Print Screen to save screenshots automatically, and Dropbox has similar options.
Anyone who has settled in with an alternative solution might not want to switch to the Snipping Tool, which is much less advanced than the third-party options. Luckily, you can pay a visit to the accessibility menu to disable the new default. The new build has been released in the beta Insider channel, which means it's closer to release than anything that pops up in the dev channel. The wait for the KB5025310 update to graduate to the stable channel will probably be measured in weeks or, at most, a few months.
