Windows 11 Clipboard History and Snipping Tool: 9 Tricks That Save Time

Two tools that ship with Windows 11 can replace half the small utilities people install: Clipboard history and the Snipping Tool.

Clipboard history

1. Turn it on: press Win+V and click “Turn on”. From now on, the last 25 things you copy are kept.
2. Paste an older item: Win+V, then pick it with the arrow keys and Enter.
3. Pin what you reuse: hover an item and click the pin. Pinned items survive restarts — perfect for your GSTIN, address or a standard email line.
4. Paste as plain text: in the Win+V panel, use the “…” menu on an item and choose “Paste as text” to drop formatting from web pages.
5. Emoji and symbols: the same panel has tabs for emoji, symbols like ₹ and ° and kaomoji.

Snipping Tool

6. Quick snip: Win+Shift+S, drag an area, and it is on your clipboard.
7. Copy text from a picture: open the snip, click “Text actions” and “Copy all text”. Great for numbers in a PDF that won’t let you select them — always check the copied digits.
8. Delayed snip: in the Snipping Tool app, set a 3–5 second delay to capture menus that close when you click elsewhere.
9. Record the screen: switch to the video camera icon to record a short clip — handy for showing a colleague exactly how to do something.

Bonus: the Print Screen key

In Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard, “Use the Print screen key to open screen capture” makes PrtSc open the snip bar directly.