Hands-On Windows 148 transcript

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0:00:00 - Paul Thurrott
Coming up. Next on Hands-On Windows, we're going to take a look at breaking changes to notepad paint and snipping tool in Windows 11 24-H2. Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. Hello everybody and welcome back to Hands-On Windows. I'm Paul Thrott. This is a follow-up episode of sorts to last week's episode.

I looked at some of the major changes coming in Windows 11 24H2, sort of at the system level, in the OS itself. This week, I want to look at some of the big changes coming to three of the apps that seem to be changing the most these days in Windows 11, notepad Paint and Snipping Tool. These days in Windows 11, notepad paint and snipping tool. So, as with the OS level changes, some of these things are actually copilot plus PC specific. Most are not. I will try to call those out accurately as well as I can. So, notepad, let's bring that one up first. So notepad, this has evolved quite a bit and if you think back to the beginning of Windows 11, when Windows 11 first shipped in 2021, notepad looked like it did in Windows 10, which looked like it did in previous versions of Windows. It hadn't really changed that much at all. Some of the early changes they made here were for things like the multiple tabs with multiple documents, session state management, light and dark mode support, which actually worked, unlike paint. And then they started adding the AI features, which are now largely available through this copilot drop down menu. Sorry, I said copilot and then I woke the demon. Let me close that. Sorry, I have that voice feature on. I said co-pilot and then I woke the demon. Let me close that. Sorry, I have that voice feature on. I should probably turn that off. So notepad I have to say I respect the changes.

We did an episode about notepad, I'm sure, fairly recently, so I've kind of liked everything they've done so far. If you don't like any of the new features, you can turn those off, excellent. But the most recent change is a big one and this is going to confuse people and it's this little thing right here in the middle of the. This is actually a menu bar, not a toolbar. But you get a toolbar right in the middle of the menu bar because I don't know Microsoft. But this suggests that there's some kind of a formatting thing going on and indeed there is a feature called formatting. Now, this is not rich text, right? So it's not RTF. It's not what we used to do with word pad, right, that kind of light version of Microsoft word. It is, in fact, for what Microsoft calls lightweight formatting or markdown style formatting, um, so it supports markdown files, which are md as opposed to txt, and it supports Markdown style input, but not really right.

So if you know anything about Markdown, you might know that you could type a hash and then this is a heading one. But if I do that here, it's just a hash with a heading one and I can type some text, and it's just a hash with a heading one and I can type some text and it's just text, and I can. I know, because I know markdown, if I, if I could type, I could do. You know, this is a link and I could put inside a parentheses, um, some kind of a url, applecom, for some reason, and god, I finally know how to type. Okay, so that that is marked down. But notepad doesn't seem to understand it and the trick is that you, we've got this little guy down here now it's not doing anything right now, but what it's telling me is that this document is plain text, so this is not marked down, although markeddown text technically is plain text. So it's not doing any sort of auto discovery of whatever, so I'm just going to delete that. But if you insert something this way so if I this is a heading one, actually a title, and now I type it, you can see it's actually kind of formatted, and now I can type some text like I did before, and now I can type something that I'll turn into a hyperlink and so select it link and get this little pop-up. I can do exactly what I did before, and this time it will look correct it's a hyperlink. I can click that and go to that website in the web browser. Now this just changed to formatted, and so this is the difference, and so I can turn that off. And they just changed to format it, and so this is the difference, and so I can turn that off and go this they call that markdown syntax. This is the plain text view of that thing. It's what I typed before, right, uh? And I can go back.

If I try to close this, it will ask me if I want to, or just try to save it. It will ask me if I want to save it, and then it gives you this warning, right? Um, right, in order to save the formatting, although technically it would still work fine. But for notepad to understand it you have to save it as a markdown file. That's what you would want to do anyway, so I will save that as a markdown. I'll just put it on my desktop here. Oops, I'm not overwrite that and it's just a test. I'll just call it test, right? So I actually use a different app for markdown, but if I double click this, you'll see that app and you can see it's got all kind of a couple little formatting issues or whatever, but no big deal. Save it, okay. You can open it in notepad.

Most people probably won't have, uh, an editor, of kind of Markdown editor, and so you could just do it this way. It would open in Notepad natively, I guess, and that's fine, so, yeah, so why are they doing this? Well, it's not to replace WordPad. It's because actually developers use Markdown all the time. I use Markdown for writing. I use it for my books, I use it for the website articles I write, but developers use it for my books. I use it for the website articles I write, but developers use it for documentation, and so Markdown is super common in the developer space, especially on GitHub. You'll see the readme file for every GitHub repository is a Markdown file.

It is plain text. The beauty of it is if well, actually, I can't open it in Notepad anymore. I used to be able to do that If you open it in just a text editor that doesn't understand Markdown, you get this view and this is just plain text. It's always going to be human readable. It may not be perfect, it's not great, but you can understand it and it's obviously machine readable as well. So it's never going to go. It's never going to be something you could lose, because nothing supports the document format. It's just plain text. Kind of an interesting thing. I'd like it to be a little more sophisticated around the way it does things.

I think putting this up here is going to, you know, by default. It's going to confuse some people, but if you go in here you can see you can just turn it off. So I'm not going to turn it off. I actually do use this, but kind of an interesting new feature. Okay, that's a big one, controversial, I know, but let's bring up paint, and so I don't have paint in there. I'll just search for paint and bring up paint. Paint's another one.

Lots of modernization under Windows 11. Started off really poorly. In the early days this was just light mode. It didn't support light and dark mode, but now it does both. It's brought back a lot of the keyboard shortcuts, so it's kind of more like the way it used to be. I think it was earlier this year I did an episode just about paint and how I use paint and of course, at that point it had evolved a lot over time. But it has evolved even more since the last time we spoke to me.

The big one is this move toward more professional tools. So paint supports layers, like photoshop does, and I use that when I do my christmas card. I'm sure I use that example where you can put images in different layers and then turn them on and off and see how it impacts the image without the full image, without destructively ruining what was underneath it. Right, it's kind of a neat, kind of a new thing, and this works with a lot of the new features. So, including some of the stuff we're going to go over here, the ai based stuff that they've been doing over the past year or so includes things like this background removal tool here and now.

There are so many of these things. They actually have this menu and what you're going to see here will vary based on whether you have a co-pilot plus pc or a normal pc, and this is another area where I'm going to forget which is which but co-creator and image creator. I I believe that image creator is the one that requires you to just click on and find out, but I believe this does not require a co-pilot plus PC, so it must be co-creator that does. So, depending on the type of computer you have, you're going to see slightly different things. There is also a welcome experience now and I only point this out because this is starting to turn into a pretty complex tool so they're actually kind of helping you understand what these new features are. I've already clicked through this on this computer, but you can bring it up with this little bullhorn icon here.

So new stuff there's generative erase, and so actually to do that, let me bring up an image and this is not a great choice, but I will use it nonetheless so you can see that whole thing. This is an AI-created version of sort of the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper, if you remember that, and if I wanted to go in here and say generative erase, it will. Let me draw over the areas, the area that I want to erase, right, and so I could kind of go in here and be like, get rid of this thing. And really what it's doing is generative erase and fill right. It's not just going to remove whatever that little bush thing is there, it's going to try to replace the background. So it looks pretty good. Actually, it doesn't look any different at all Depending on what it is you're trying to like.

For example, if I went here and said, okay, I want to get rid of this giant cloud, you can see it takes a little while for one thing, right, um, it does. The little ai blue, pink, purple, you know animation, hand waving thing, um, and then we'll see what comes out. That's not working at all. So that's terrible. So we're not gonna, we're just to move past that, um, but this works. The generative erase feature works, uh, with some of the other stuff we're going to look at too. So there is now object select. So talk, speaking of um, photoshop, like features, uh, this is kind of cool. This is not a great image for this again, um, but now I can select objects. So as I mouse over it selected the entire background.

If I chose, say, genitive erase from this. Actually, this would be a mess, I would imagine. So I can. Actually, is there a? You should get a little, yeah, a little pop-up thing here. It's going to take a little while because this is actually a pretty big image and this is a big chunk of that image, but it's probably going to yeah, throw in a green mess looks terrible it. It's trying to make it look like the rest of the image. This is not a great choice for this type of thing, but I showed you those like the bush earlier. That didn't work. So if I select that and then do generative erase, this should look more natural.

This is a simple little thing. It will just be some kind of green color, so it's probably not perfect, but it's pretty good. And of course, I could have done that on a layer as well. I didn't, but that would make that thing non-destructive, so I can just control z back, but that's pretty cool. So if you are familiar with these kind of tools that you see in, like paintnet or photoshop, whatever, um, really useful to have. And then, on the more frivolous side, there is a sticker generator, because we all need stickers, I'll just use the little sample that Microsoft put there. So it's a cat wearing sunglasses.

Because I can't possibly be creative right now, and actually in this case I think I will put a. I'll put this one in a layer. So it's going to make four of these things. I can choose one. Let's move it nice and fast. And, yeah, I'll put this little guy in there. And there he is now. So this isn't a layer and so I'm not going to do anything else with that. I'm just going to close that and I can there it is. So I can't move it.

Now it's not an object anymore although I could object select but because it is in a layer, I can hide it Right, which is pretty good. Um, if you do want to, if you this isn't where I wanted this thing I would have to just basically do that again. Right, I, there's, so I could hide that. I could hide that. Um, go back to yes, yes, yes, thank you. Uh, oh, I'm hiding the layer. I got to do another layer and then go back to that thing. It's, this is still there, so I can just click it again. Double click, I guess. I got to drag it in, so you got to. You have to decide where it's going to be first. You can't move this thing later. It's not. It's not an automatic layer of its own kind or whatever, like you might have in photoshop or whatever, so you can kind of resize this thing. Okay, that's okay. But once I let go of it, it's just there. So it's. You know, it's not photoshop, but it's. It's still pretty cool. I'm not really sure I would ever use a sticker, but it's okay, and do not save that, okay.

And then the snipping tool. This one, to me, is the most impressive. Um, when microsoft first rebranded uh, what is now snipping Tool? And when it going from Windows 10 to Windows 11, it was originally Snipping Tool they changed the name to something else. Now it's back to Snipping Tool. I thought of it as superfluous. I didn't really see any need for it. It's interesting to me how indispensable this thing has become.

The controversial bit here for me was that they made it the print screen replacement. So when you press print screen which I'll have to do on this keyboard up here you get the overlay for snipping tool, which now has a bunch of stuff on it. Right, it used to be. In the beginning it was just screenshots and then they added screen recordings, so it's snips and recordings. If you're doing a snip, which is a screenshot, you can choose between these different shapes, so a full screen window, free form, et cetera. But there's this other stuff now, right, and so this is really interesting to me. There's also some other features I think we looked at earlier like you can do things like trim screenshots, trim screen recordings. There's a feature coming where you can take a short screen recording and turn it into an animated GIF. That's not a horrible idea. But what I want to focus on now are these things here which are mostly new.

So the first two here this is just a toggle between the two, you know, snip and recording screenshot, screen recording, right? This is also not new. This has not changed. These are the same options that have been there for whatever amount of time. But if you have a rectangle selected, like I do there, I got to bring it back. Of course, it took a screenshot of nothing. So if I bring that thing back, actually do it, let me. Let me put a window in there so we have something to take a shot of, I guess, and I go this wrong keyboard, bring this guy back.

Let's look at the first one here. So this is called perfect screenshot, and you could actually do this by just doing a normal screenshot while you're holding down the control key as well, as it says. But let's just select that, and what this lets me do is sort of draw roughly on this thing. So, in other words, I'm not going to I would never be able to, with the mouse, grab this window exactly. I mean, obviously, in this case there's also a window screenshot. I could just choose, but what it will do is use AI to understand what it is I'm trying to select and then just select it for me, right? So if you're using a pen or multi-touch or whatever, or a mouse, right? This is a really nice way to just grab exactly what you want, so that I can click capture and you can see. It's just a window, so that's cool. There is also oh, maybe I should bring that back actually.

The next one is click to do. Now, this is actually nothing special. This is just another way to launch click to do so, if you think in terms of snipping tool, because I'm capturing something, it will just bring up the normal click to do experience. So you've got text and graphics you can do things with. Uh, if I were to right click on any of these, I get the same actions as I would get just launching click to do right windows key plus click or whatever a windows key plus q? Um, I'm not gonna to do that, I'll just escape out of that. But so it's just another way to do that.

This next one to me is huge. I actually need this kind of thing a lot. I take a lot of screenshots. Depending on your needs. You might find this really useful as well, and what that is is a color picker. So this time we're actually not going to take a screenshot or a screen recording. Instead, you just select this color picker tool and you get this little eyedropper and it gives you the color. Now you can choose up here what form the color you will copy to the clipboard will take.

If you're a web developer or a programmer, you typically would work with this hex number. This is very familiar to me, but you can choose these other values as well. Maybe you're making a graphic and a graphics program like Photoshop and you need to get a color exactly right, whatever it might be, so as you move around you can see. It's just telling me what all the colors are. So once I like, I'll describe a blue color here. I get this thing. I click it. You can see it says color copied. And if I were to go to let's put it in notepad and paste, you can see I got the hex number for that color there. It's very cool so that's neat. So that's actually most of the new features in a snipping tool.

So the next thing over is like more tools, and this is just an overflow menu. I'm not sure why color picker is in there twice, but you can say I don't actually want to pin this, but I do want text extractor, which is one of the things we've talked about before. This is basic OCR capabilities, right? So if I were to do text extractor on this part of the screen, you know AI, blah, blah, blah, copy all the text. I think we've already shown this, but incapace. It's not a great example, but it gives you just the text whatever was on screen. Really really cool. So, um, that has turned into an amazing tool.

Um, snipping tool. This editing functions. I mentioned, uh, the ability to trim the video on either side, I think. I think I did that in a previous video and, like I said, coming soon also, uh, gif creation off of a video. So the only thing it doesn't do is capture the mouse cursor, which is something I actually do need for my own screenshots a lot of the time, so I'm hoping that's something that we get. Uh, eventually it has.

Everything else is pretty good. So, um, pretty impressive. Um, and except for click to do, I believe all of those features are for everybody. Click to do obviously requires a copilot plus PC, but the rest of those features are for everybody. Click to do obviously requires a copilot plus pc, but the rest of those features are are just for everyone, so kind of a mix in there for all three apps. So notepad, paint and snipping tool lots of new features. By the time you watch this recording, you should have all of them, depending on the kind of pc you have, right, but this stuff has all been happening over the past few months.

Pretty cool, well, well, thank you so much. I hope you found this interesting or entertaining, at least. Um, we have a new episode of hands on windows every Thursday. You can learn more at twittv slashH O W. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you Especially to our club twit members. We love you. If you're not a member, please, uh, please, check it out. Twittv slash how and think about supporting the channel. Really appreciate it, but I'll see you next week.