Snipping Tool is the default app for screenshots in Windows 11. There's a lot more to the app than that, however: With it, you can take screen recordings, extract text from images or websites that disable copying, and use a reverse image search tool. While ShareX is still my favorite app for taking screenshots in Windows, I think Snipping Tool has reached a point where it's great for both beginners and power users. Here are 10 essential Snipping Tool hacks that every Windows 11 user should know.

Use 'Scan Text' to copy text from images

Copying text from images is one of the most common uses of screenshot tools, and Snipping Tool does it quite well. You can right-click any image in Windows 11, and go to Open with > Snipping Tool. Once the photo opens, you can click the Scan Text button to select all the text in the image. Windows will take a few moments to identify all the text in the photo, and, when it's ready, you can click Copy all text from the popover menu. You're also free to select a single sentence or block of text by clicking and dragging the cursor over it, and you can right-click this selection to reveal the Copy text button.

Use Text Extractor to copy text without taking screenshots

If all you want to do is copy text from sites that disable copying, interface elements in an app, or PDFs of scanned pages where you can't select the text easily, then you should use Snipping Tool to select and copy text without even taking a screenshot. This allows you to reduce unwanted image clutter by skipping the "taking a screenshot" step, and jumping straight to extracting text. To try this, open the Snipping Tool app in your Windows PC, and click the Text extractor button in the toolbar. You can click and drag over an area of the screen that contains text, and the app will automatically select it in a moment or two. Click Copy all text in the popover menu, and you're done.

Use this setting to automatically redact sensitive information from screenshots

Credit: Pranay Parab

Snipping Tool allows you to do some basic image editing, which you can use to automatically redact sensitive information from screenshots. Open any screenshot in Snipping Tool, and click Scan text. Once the tool scans for text, a popover menu will appear. You can select Quick redact here to automatically hide all phone numbers and email addresses in the screenshot. It's pretty accurate and puts a black bar over sensitive information, which is much safer than blurring phone numbers and email addresses.

Use the timer to set up your screen before taking screenshots

Setting up an elaborate screenshot on your PC can be frustrating since Snipping Tool takes the screenshot instantly by default. In these instances, you can set a delay of three to 10 seconds before you capture the screen. If you have the Snipping Tool open, right-click its icon in the taskbar to quickly take a timed screenshot. Three buttons let you take a screenshot in three, five, or 10 seconds. You can also set up the Snipping Tool to always add a delay before capturing a screenshot. Open the app, and click the camera icon in the toolbar. Then, click the timer icon in the toolbar, and select the delay you wish to add.

Use Snipping Tool for screencasts to help others solve tech issues

When my friends or family members call for help with tech issues, I often send them a screencast with commentary to show how to fix the issue. In Snipping Tool, you can toggle a setting to include microphone audio by default when you record the screen. This lets me record my voice while I'm demonstrating how to solve the problem, and I use the mouse pointer to highlight what to click. Once you set up Snipping Tool to record your audio by default for screen recordings, this process hardly takes any time. Open Snipping Tool in your PC, and click the three-dots icon in the top-right corner. Select Settings, and enable Include microphone input by default when a screen recording starts.

Use this feature to produce social media-ready screenshots

Credit: Pranay Parab

When you capture screenshots, you can make Snipping Tool automatically add a solid color border to each image. This is great for posting to social media, as it makes screenshots look uniform and fit your aesthetic. Go to Snipping Tool settings and enable Add border to each screenshot. Select the Color block to pick the color you want for the border, and use the Thickness slider to adjust the width of the border.

Use the Freeform tool to capture screenshots in irregular shapes

The Freeform tool lets you draw an area on the screen, and captures a screenshot of everything inside that area. You can draw any shape you like, and the tool automatically closes small gaps in the shape to complete the screenshot. I like the fact that the Freeform tool is forgiving enough to smooth out poorly drawn shapes, which means you don't necessarily need to have steady hands to capture useful screenshots. To use this tool, open Snipping Tool, and click the camera icon in the toolbar. Next, select the rectangle icon, and choose Freeform. When you take the next screenshot, Snipping Tool will let you draw an irregular shape on the screen.

Disable automatic saving to stop screenshots from piling up on your PC

If you disable auto-save for screenshots, it directly copies screenshots to the clipboard. You can then make edits and send them to the app you need, or hit the save button to store the edited screenshots. This stops screenshots from piling up and adding to the clutter on your hard drive. I only need to save around one in 10 screenshots I capture, which makes this particularly useful for me. To try it out, go to Snipping Tool settings and disable Automatically save original screenshots.

Use this tool to hide people's faces from photos or screenshots

Snipping Tool has a "Shapes" option, which is meant to hide people's faces from images or screenshots. Here's how it works: Once you open an image in Snipping Tool, you'll see a bunch of editing tools in the toolbar. Select the Shapes tool, which is next to the Eraser tool, and you'll see a series of options. Select the Emoji tool to add an emoticon over faces. Alternatively, you can select the Square or Oval tools, but be sure to use the color fill option to hide private information thoroughly. Select Fill, and choose a color. You can also disable the Outline if you wish to, as it adds a border to the shape you draw on the screenshot. Then, you can draw a rectangle, square, circle, or an oval on the screenshot, and you'll find a solid color block that can hide sensitive information.

Use the built-in reverse image search to identify objects in the screenshots

Snipping Tool has a reverse image search feature that uses Bing to locate objects, places, or elements from your screenshots or images. You can use this to identify subjects in an image, or to check if a scammer has copied a profile picture from a different person's profile. To use this feature, open an image in Snipping Tool, and click the three dots in the top-right corner of the app. Select Visual Search with Bing, and it will open Bing's reverse image search results in your default browser.

Gemini Spark, the AI agent built into Google Gemini, is now a lot cheaper to try out in the U.S. Previously, Gemini Spark was exclusive to the Google AI Ultra plan, which costs $100-$200 per month. The company is now bringing the agentic AI to its AI Pro plan, which costs $20 per month. (For now, this change is exclusive to the U.S.)

When Gemini Spark was announced during Google I/O 2026, its features seemed potentially useful, but the barrier to entry was too high for most people. That appears to be changing now, as Google has cut the price by as much as 90%. It is not yet available on the $5/month AI Plus plan or the free tier, but that could change in the future too—though it's likely that using Gemini Spark on lower pricing tiers could mean that you hit your usage limits much faster.

What is Gemini Spark?

Google Gemini is a chatbot and a voice assistant that answers your questions, creates text, media, and even entire apps for you. Gemini Spark takes those capabilities to your Google account and executes actions for you.

You can think of Gemini Spark as a personal AI assistant that can look at your emails, calendar entries, photos, and other data in your Google account to perform tasks on your behalf. You can use Spark to bulk unsubscribe from mailing lists, make flight bookings, send reminder emails to clients, colleagues, or family members, book appointments, and much more.

Having said all that, a Gemini Spark overview from out sister site PC Mag emphasizes that its features tend to overlap with Gemini. PC Mag called Spark the best AI agent yet, but that doesn't mean it's perfect.

Does Gemini Spark respect your privacy?

To someone who is even remotely privacy-conscious, using Gemini Spark is going to sound quite invasive: You basically have to give it access to your entire computer if you want it to be able to act on your behalf. Google is aware of that, and has programmed the AI agent to ask for confirmations before performing certain actions. If you ask the agent to find birthday photos from 2017 and email them to someone, for example, Gemini Spark will show you the pictures and ask for a confirmation before actually sending the email. It applies the same logic to deleting emails, sending messages, using your saved credit cards to pay for reservations, and more.

It's worth keeping in mind that AI services have created serious problems for people who use these apps without due caution. The biggest strength of Gemini is its access to all the data that’s in your Google account, but if you give it unrestricted access and the AI agent messes up a request, you could be stuck with an incorrect hotel reservation, a flight booked to a wrong country, or other serious consequences.

I try to avoid opening news websites as much as possible these days. One can only read so many articles about crime, war, and all of the many other injustices in this world, and I've often wished I could filter out the news I don't want to know about. I've done this, to a large extent, on social media platforms, some of which allow you to block posts containing certain keywords, while doing so on others requires a browser extension.

However, the problem persists on the broader web: I can't open any big-name news website without seeing repeated mentions of the poor decisions of billionaires and politicians or the tragic effects of climate change, and I've been looking for a way to give myself a bit of a buffer against the onslaught of despair. I finally found an effective method when I started using Filtre, a recently launched Safari extension that allows you to hide pages containing keywords you'd rather avoid. The concept is simple—create your list of keywords, and the extension will handle the rest. It works quite well for the most part, and I recommend trying it out—your mental health will thank you.

How to set up Filtre on all your Apple devices

Credit: Pranay Parab

Filtre works on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and a single purchase unlocks the extension's features across all three platforms. You can get started with the week-long free trial, after which the app costs $1.50/month, $9/year, or a one-time purchase fee of $28. Once you've made that decision, it's easy to set up. You fire up the app, give Filtre permission to access websites, and start adding keywords you want to block. Extensions like these aren't very useful if they don't sync filters across devices, and I'm glad to see that Filtre ships with iCloud sync compatibility. In my testing, it was able to instantly sync filters between my Mac and iPhone.

Use this extension to filter out noise or avoid spoilers

There are many ways to use an extension like Filtre, but I've mostly been using it to limit political news. It's easy to set up a few keywords that block out names of politicians, and the extension lets you choose how you wish to obscure those headlines. The default option will hide all mentions of your chosen keywords, but you can also choose "Fade" or "Greyscale." Fade keeps headlines intact but blocks your keywords in place, and reduces the headlines' opacity to make them easier to skim past. Grayscale converts any part of the webpage that includes your keywords into black-and-white. You can adjust these options under the Default Settings tab in the Filtre app (which will appear in the app drawer on your iPhone/iPad or be searchable via Finder on a Mac).

Credit: Pranay Parab

Set different customizations

While universal filters are the default, you can also create different sets of filters for different websites. For instance, if you visit a website that covers movies or video games, you could create a filter set to hide spoilers from Christopher Nolan's Odyssey or Grand Theft Auto 6 on those sites only.

In Filtre's Website Settings tab, you'll be able to set up different filters for each site you frequent, or choose to disable some filter sets on certain sites. The extension allows you to export filter sets easily, which is convenient when you want to share your blocklists with others, and also for those who want to avoid using iCloud sync. You can send a filter list via AirDrop and load it on another of your devices.

I did notice a few minor limitations while using the extension. For example, I've deleted Instagram's app from my devices, so when I need to access the site, I open it in Safari. Filtre didn't seem to have any impact on my Instagram feed at all. Since most social media sites allow you to mute keywords already, this limitation didn't bother me much. (On the plus side, Filtre does work with Reddit, though it started hiding my entire feed when I switched to Old Reddit.)

Filtre passes the privacy check

My biggest concern with browser extensions is how much data they can access. For Filtre to be effective across the web, you'll need to give it permission to access every website you visit, which might sound quite invasive. However, the developer Jeffrey Kuiken has explicitly stated that the app doesn't collect any of your data, and it even stores all your filters only locally and in the linked iCloud account. The same developer also made Noir, an extension that enables dark mode for every website you visit in Safari, and has earned the community's trust via a transparent business model and regular updates.

I regularly use my iPhone to scan physical documents like medical reports, identity cards, forms from my bank, etc. Since 2015 or so, I've used an app called Scanner Pro to get the job done. It works well enough, but the best features require a subscription and it is no longer as fast as I'd like it to be. I've long known about Apple's built-in scanner in the Notes app, but it isn't as convenient as the app I've been using, so I never made the switch.

That changed when I recently discovered another built-in scanner on the iPhone, hidden away in the Preview app, of all places. This one is fast, free, and well integrated with the Files app, which is a big plus. Here's why you should consider using it

Your iPhone's Preview app has a hidden document scanner

Your iPhone ships with an app called Preview, which was added with the release of iOS 26 in 2025. Now, when you open a document in the Files app, your iPhone will automatically switch to Preview and load the it. However, if you open the Preview app directly, you'll see a "Scan Documents" button front and center. I've been using iOS 26 since the developer betas released, but I only noticed this feature after the recent release of the iOS 27 betas.

When you tap Scan Documents in Preview, your iPhone will fire up the viewfinder, and you can point the device at the documents you want to scan. Like Scanner Pro, the Preview app's scanner automatically identifies document borders, takes a picture to scan, and reopens the viewfinder so you can point the camera at the next page; it'll scan that quickly too. Continue this process till you're done scanning, after which you can hit the checkmark button in the top-right corner. The scanned PDF will automatically be saved to your iCloud Drive folder, without the need to export it. I found this process to be really fast and intuitive enough to recommend to my family members, who resist any technology that requires them to install a new app or press more than two buttons.

When the scanner is open, you'll see four buttons near the bottom of the screen. The big shutter button lets you manually click pictures for the scan, and the other three let you toggle flash, set color filters, and toggle on the auto-shutter feature, respectively. Auto shutter is the best feature of this app, as it automatically scans a page the moment it detects borders, but it's not perfect. If you want more precise control over your scans, you can disable it, and control the shutter manually.

Why Preview's scanner is much better than the one in Apple Notes

I don't enjoy dealing with PDFs in Apple Notes, and that's the best argument for using the scanner in Preview, which immediately saves those documents to the Files app. First, Notes makes it much harder to find and use the scanner: You need to open a note, tap the paperclip icon, and select the document scanner from the menu. The output is saved in the same note, and I find it unwieldy to deal with PDFs from within in the Notes app, which is best suited to viewing text-only notes.

I now only use the Notes app to scan documents when I specifically want to store the file in the Notes app. But other than the odd recipe I might scan to keep there, I don't foresee myself using the Notes scanner again. In most cases, Preview's scanner does a much better job.

Another third-party scanning app to consider

If you want more features than Apple's document scanner, there are third-party apps that may suit you better. In addition to Scanner Pro, which I mentioned above, Adobe Scan does a great job with scanning, OCR (optical character recognition) and has a generous free tier. In the free tier, Adobe Scan lets you capture unlimited scans, provides 2GB of space in Adobe Document cloud, and offers OCR for documents up to 25 pages long.

The premium tier costs $10/month, and adds a bunch of PDF editing features such as combining PDFs, extracting specific pages from a scan, and editing text in PDFs. You also get to use OCR on scans up to 100 pages per document, up to 20 GB of cloud storage, and a tool called Magic Eraser, which can automatically remove your thumb or fingers from scanned pages. I think the free tier is good enough for most people, but the most annoying thing about Adobe Scan is that even the free tier requires you to sign up for an account. You can sign in with your Apple, Google, or Facebook accounts to make it quick, but it's still an unnecessary step for those who just want an app that'll let them start scanning the moment it's installed.

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Preview is one of the Mac's most underrated apps. At first, you'll likely only encounter Preview when you try to open images or PDFs, but there's much more to the app than just opening files. I began exploring Preview's advanced features a decade ago, and I've found it's one of the best free PDF editors for the Mac. And, if you have an iPhone or iPad, you get many of the same benefits with Preview's mobile version. If you'd like to make the most of Preview, here are 10 hacks you should know.

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Use this shortcut to view files without opening them in Preview

It might seem paradoxical, but one of the best Preview hacks is avoiding using Preview when you don't need to. If you're opening every single app on your Mac each time you want to quickly view something, you're probably wasting a lot of time. Instead, you can preview files without opening them. Start by locating the file you wish to preview, then select it and press the spacebar. This action activates Quick Look, which taps into Preview to view the file without opening it. To close this preview, you can press the spacebar once again. I use this regularly to view images, PDFs, or even to check how many files are inside a folder. If you're annoyed by Preview's limitation of not showing the contents of a folder in Quick Look, then you can use an app called Folder Preview to add that feature to your Mac.

Change this setting to use Preview's hidden PDF dark mode

Credit: Pranay Parab

Preview can open PDFs for you, but those files often have a bright white background—even when your device is in dark mode. If, like me, you dislike reading documents with bright backgrounds, there's good news: Preview allows you to use a dark background for PDFs. To try this, open a PDF in Preview, select View in the menu bar, then click Use Dark Appearance for PDF. This will switch the PDF to a dark background with white text, and Preview will remember your preferences for all PDFs that you open in the future. This feature also works in Preview for iPhone and iPad. Just open a PDF in the app, tap the three dots in the top-right corner, and select Dark Background.

Use "Open Image from Clipboard" to edit photos without saving them to your Mac

Most of us save images to our Macs before opening them using Preview. However, you can bypass this step by opening images directly from your clipboard. This way, you can copy an image from any app, including browsers or messaging apps, and have Preview open it for editing instantly. Copy any image to your Mac's clipboard, open Preview, and press Command + N to open the image for editing. Alternatively, you can open Preview and select File > New from Clipboard.

Use this hidden Preview setting to remove image backgrounds

Most people turn to image editors for relatively simple tasks such as removing the background from a photo. Preview can actually handle this task well, but the feature isn't obvious when you start using the app. You can check it out by opening an image in Preview and pressing Command + Shift + K, which should remove the picture's background.

There are two other ways to use this feature in Preview. You can either click Tools > Remove Background from the menu bar, or select Remove Background in the app's toolbar, which has a camera icon with diagonal lines within the borders. (This was a recent discovery for me, as I didn't know what this icon did until I accidentally left the cursor on the button and read the tooltip.)

Open PDFs and images in Preview to copy their text

Preview also makes it easy to copy text from images and PDFs. While most PDF documents make it easy to select text, I've come across quite a few where each page is a scanned image, which prevents you from selecting text. In these situations, Preview can help you extract text from images easily. To use this feature, open an image, screenshot, or PDF in Preview, move the cursor over the text, and double-click or drag the cursor over the text to select it. Feel free to copy and paste it as you like. This feature works in Preview for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Use this setting to turn your iPhone into a dedicated document scanner

Credit: Pranay Parab

Preview for Mac allows you to use your iPhone as a document scanner. Open the app and go to File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents. As long as your iPhone and Mac are signed in to the same iCloud account, this should open the Camera app on the iPhone, automatically set to scan documents. Point the camera at a page, and your iPhone will automatically identify borders and scan the page. It's set to keep scanning until you press the checkmark button in the top-right corner. Once you're done, the document is automatically imported into Preview for Mac, where you can edit the scan before saving it. The same scanning mode is available in Preview for iPhone and iPad. Open the app and tap Scan Documents to get started.

Reveal your image's metadata before uploading to the internet

Metadata, like EXIF data, allows you to identify important details about a photo, such as when it was captured, which camera and lens were used, where you shot the image, and so on. Preview lets you view this metadata easily. Just open any image in Preview, and tap or click the i button in the app. On iPhone and iPad, this reveals a long list of all metadata for the photo. On Mac, you'll see these details organized into two tabs. Click the i tab to view the rest of the metadata in Preview for Mac.

This can be a great way to learn more about how your photo was shot. (There really is a lot of data here.) But I also recommend reviewing this data before sharing the image with others, or on the internet. If you find too many personal, sensitive, or identifying data points within, take steps to remove the EXIF data before sending the image out into the wild. Before sending a photo on Mac, right-click it in Finder, choose Quick Actions > Convert Image, then uncheck Preserve Metadata.

Combine multiple PDF pages into one document with Preview

Preview is a good free PDF editor for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You can use it to combine multiple PDF pages into a single document, or to remove pages from a PDF file. To use this feature, open a PDF file in Preview. If you're doing this on a Mac, click the sidebar button, located to the right of the green full-screen button in the toolbar. Select Thumbnails, and click the tiny + button in the bottom-left corner. Then, choose Insert Page from File… If you wish to delete a page from a PDF, simply select its thumbnail in the left pane, and press the delete key on your Mac's keyboard.

In Preview for iPhone and iPad, open a PDF, and swipe right from the left edge of the screen to show page thumbnails in a pane. Tap the three dots on any page, and select Insert from File to combine pages from another PDF. In the same menu, tap Delete Page to remove a page from the PDF file.

Use Preview's "Signature" feature to avoid printing out documents

Preview allows you to digitally sign documents, which can be a big help. If someone asks you to send a signed copy of a document, you don't have to print it, sign the file, and scan it again to send it back. Instead, you can open the file in Preview, and click Form Filling Toolbar (the rectangle with three dots and a pencil). This appears in the toolbar up top in Preview for Mac, and in the bottom bar in Preview for iPhone or iPad. Then, you can choose Add Signature to create your digital signature, and sign the document quickly.

Edit a PDF's permissions to password-protect your documents

Preview for Mac is also a good tool to add or remove passwords from your PDFs. To add a password to your PDF, open a document in Preview, and select File > Export. Click Permissions, and you'll be able to add a password to open the document, and even an owner password for the file, which lets you stop people from editing, printing, or copying text from your PDFs without the password. To remove a password from a PDF file, open it in Preview on your Mac, and go to File > Enter Password. Once you enter the owner password in the right pane, select Edit, which will let you edit the permissions for the document. You can use this settings pane to remove all passwords from the file, and save it to your computer.

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While iOS 27 might be focused on Siri AI, there are plenty of other upgrades under the surface. Case in point: The new update brings a number of new features to Messages. The app is getting an AI feature that's actually useful, better notifications, and performance updates that bring faster loading and syncing across devices. Here's everything that's coming to Messages in iOS 27. Note that the update isn't due out until sometime in the fall, and while you can try these features on the iOS 27 beta now, understand the risks involved before you do. See Lifehacker's explainer here for more information.

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You can now remove the voice message button

I do send voice notes here and there, but not nearly enough to justify keeping the voice message button in the chat box. More often than not, I hit that button accidentally and end up sending garbled audio from my pocket. With iOS 27, you can now customize that button. Once you've updated to iOS 27, you can go to Settings > Apps > Messages, and select Show in Text Field. You have three choices here: Record Audio, Start Dictation, and None. I went with "None," but you're free to replace voice messages with dictation too.

iOS 27 lets you speed up voice notes in iMessage

When you receive a voice note in iMessage in iOS 27, you'll notice that your iPhone allows you to control the playback speed. Previously, you had to listen to the voice note at 1x speed. In iOS 27, you can bump it up to 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x. Just tap the 1x button next to any voice note once to reveal the playback speed menu. This'll save you a lot of time when listening to longer voice notes.

Use Siri AI to write your messages

The new Siri AI from iOS 27 is also fully integrated with Messages. When you open a chat and tap the chat box, you'll see a "Write with Siri" button above the keyboard. You can tap this and ask Siri to compose a message for you, or even rewrite or edit your message to change its tone or add a few more details. You can also ask Siri AI to find specific messages, images, or links sent in the app. This feature is exclusive to devices that support Apple Intelligence.

Drawing is a new iMessage app

It's easy to forget that iMessage has "apps," but it looks like Apple hasn't given up on the category yet. In iOS 27, Apple added a new one called Drawing, which allows you to quickly draw something and send it to your contacts. Even if your contact doesn't have iOS 27, they'll still be able to view the drawings you send. To access it, press the + button next to the chat box, and you'll see all available iMessage apps.

Apple is adding one-tap suggestions in Messages

iOS 27 is also adding one-tap suggestions to Messages for iPhones that support Apple Intelligence. I haven't tried this feature yet, but Apple has shared a couple of examples of how this could play out. When someone asks you for photos, Apple says Siri AI can suggest relevant options by recognizing keywords, locations, and people in your photo library. In another scenario, if your friend asks you to bring something to your next meeting, you'll see buttons to add that message to Notes or Reminders.

iOS will automatically try resending failed messages

Whenever a message fails to send, it typically sits in the Messages app with a big red exclamation mark next to it. With iOS 27, your iPhone will try to resend these messages. Other reliability updates include faster message loading and faster syncing across devices.

Each message gets its own send indicator

When you send a large attachment, like a high-res photo or video, it can add confusion to your chats in Messages, as text messages sent after the photo or video may look like they're waiting for the media to send first. Apple is fixing this in iOS 27 by showing you a send indicator for each individual message. That way, you can see that while a video might still be sending, the message you sent after already went through.

You can search for messages by phone number or nickname

In the Messages app, you can use the search field to look up conversations by phone number, and you'll see all the conversations that include the person who has that number. You can also search for a person's nickname in Messages to reveal all conversations with that person—assuming you've added their nickname to their contact.

Consolidated notifications for message reactions

When you're in a big group chat, and 15 people react to your joke, it blows up your iPhone's notifications. Apple's changing that in iOS 27, and will only show a single notification for multiple reactions.

Inline replies for RCS messages

When you're texting people who use Android, you'll automatically use RCS messaging. In iOS 27, you can send inline replies to people via RCS, which means you and the recipient will be able to see which of their texts you're replying to. This is great when you're on a text thread with a mix of people on iOS and Android, as it will make the conversation a lot easier to follow.