Getting Started

Snipaste consists of three major functionalities: Snip, Image Annotation and Paste.

Snip

How to start snipping

• By hotkey (default F1)
• Left click on the tray icon

What is a successful snipping

• Save to clipboard ( / Ctrl + C / Enter / Double click on the snipping area)
• Save to file ( / Ctrl + S)
• Paste to screen ( / Ctrl + T)
• Quick Save (Shift + / Ctrl + Shift + S)

How to abort snipping

• Press Esc at any moment
• Click the X button at any moment
• Right click when you are not in edit mode
• Any window of other programs is activated at any moment
  • This behavior can be disabled in the Preferences Dialog

Replay your snipping history

• Press , or . after you start snipping
• Only successful snippings will appear in the snipping history
• The max number of history records can be set in the option dialog

Move the cursor by pixel

• W A S D

Adjust the snipping area by pixel

• Hold Mouse left button + W A S D (Recommended! You can move, enlarge and shrink the area in this way.）
• Move the area： ↑ ← ↓ →
• Enlarge the area：Ctrl + ↑ ← ↓ →
• Shrink the area： Shift + ↑ ← ↓ →

The magnifier

• The magnifier will automatically appear when it should
• If it is not visible when you need it, hold Alt

Pick and copy the color (in RGB/Hex)

• Press C when the magnifier is visible. You can then press F3 to paste it as a color card, or press Ctrl + V to paste it into other programs
• You can press Shift to toggle the color format

Image Annotation

How to finish editing the current shape manually

• Right click

How to re-edit a finished shape

• Press Undo until the shape you want to edit disappears, then press Redo
• Direct re-edit will be implemented in the future

I would like to use my own color instead of those in the color board

• Press the bigger color button

How to adjust the arrow size

• Mouse scroll
• 1 2

How to scale the text

• Drag the corners of the text box

How to scale the text and also rotate it

• Hold Ctrl before you drag the corners of the text box

How to make rotated text to be horizontal again

• Hold Shift before you drag the corners of the text box

Paste

In most cases, "Paste" is to convert the content in the system clipboard into an image and make it a topmost floating window.

Therefore, whether an image will come out, or what will appear when you paste, depends on the content in your system clipboard.

How to paste

• By hotkey (default F3)
• Middle click on the tray icon
• Choose Paste to screen when you are snipping

When can I paste

• There is an image in the clipboard
• There is color information in the clipboard
• RGB：three 0255 integers or three 01 float numbers
• HEX：a valid hex color value starting with #
• There is text in the clipboard
• Pure text
• HTML text
• There is a file path in the clipboard (i.e. you copied some file(s))
• If the file is an image, the image will be pasted
  • If you paste again, the file path will be converted into an image and be pasted
• If the file is not an image, the file path will be converted into an image and be pasted
• Starting from v1.5, you can choose never paste file paths in the option dialog

Rotate the image window

• 1 2

Horizontal/Vertical flip

• 3 4

Scale the image window

• Mouse scroll
• + -
• Drag the border of the window

Set the transparency of the image window

• Ctrl + Mouse scroll
• Ctrl + + -

Make all images be mouse click-through

• By hotkey (default F4)
• Notice the change in the tray icon ;-)

Reset the image to be 100% size and 100% opaque

• Middle click
• Customizable since v1.8.4

Thumbnail mode

• Win + Left click on the image window
• Customizable since v1.8.4

Hide an image window

• Esc
• Double click
• Customizable since v1.8.4
• The hidden image can be recovered by another pasting, unless the max hidden number is reached
• The max hidden number for pasting can be set in the option dialog (default/recommended to be 1）

Hide all image windows

• By hotkey (default Shift + F3)
• Press the hotkey again to show all image windows
• Hiding images in this way is completely different from the above Single-Image-Hiding, which means hiding all images will not affect the hidden image counting.

Destroy the image

• Shift + Esc
• Choose Destroy in the image window's context menu
• A destroyed image will not be recovered by another pasting
  • But it still comes out if I paste again!
    • It is because there is content in your clipboard. Snipaste just pastes it as a new image.

The magnifier

• Just like when you are snipping, hold Alt to show the magnifier

Pick and copy the color (in RGB/Hex)

• Just like when you are snipping, press C to copy the color value of the pixel