Better Snip Tool

A fast, lightweight, open-source screenshot utility for Windows, written in Rust.

Better Snip Tool stays idle in the background using the native Windows message loop. It has no web runtime, no Electron shell, no installer, and no background polling. The release is a single portable .exe.

Controls

1. Run better-snip-tool.exe once.
2. Start a capture with Alt+Shift+S, or double-click the executable again while it is already running.
3. On the dimmed capture overlay:
   • Left-drag — capture a rectangular area
   • Right-click — capture the complete virtual desktop (all monitors)
   • Middle-click — capture the window that was active when capture started
   • Esc — cancel
4. After capture:
   • Ctrl+V pastes the image.
   • Ctrl+Shift+V directly pastes the saved PNG's full file path.

Screenshots are saved in your Windows Pictures\Screenshots known folder, including when Pictures has been redirected by Windows or OneDrive.

Shortcut choice: Windows owns Win+Shift+S for the built-in Snipping Tool, so Better Snip Tool uses Alt+Shift+S by default.

Install

Download better-snip-tool.exe from the repository's Releases page and place it anywhere. Double-click it to start. Add a shortcut to shell:startup if you want it to launch when you sign in.

Better Snip Tool has no visible main window. End better-snip-tool.exe from Task Manager when you want to stop it.

Build from source

Requirements:

• Windows 10 or newer
• The stable Rust MSVC toolchain

cargo build --release

The portable executable is written to:

target\release\better-snip-tool.exe

Run the quality checks with:

cargo fmt -- --check
cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

Design

• One Rust source file: src/main.rs
• Native Win32 APIs for hotkeys, capture overlay, GDI screen capture, and clipboard integration
• Pure-Rust PNG encoding
• Per-monitor DPI awareness and multi-monitor virtual-desktop capture
• Single-instance signalling: launching a second copy tells the running copy to capture
• Zero polling while idle

During selection, the tool temporarily stores an original and dimmed copy of the virtual desktop. Those buffers are dropped immediately after capture or cancellation; idle memory use remains small.

Privacy

All processing is local. Better Snip Tool makes no network requests and uploads nothing. Images are written only to your Screenshots folder and the Windows clipboard.

License

MIT — copyright © 2026 Nigel Scott.