Snipping Tool gets enhanced with a Visual Search with Bing capability

Microsoft has quietly updated the Snipping Tool with several features over the last few Insider Builds. Some of these features were released last week and included automatic QR code detection, a new keyboard shortcut for the ruler tool, as well as the ability to modify the opacity of outline colors with a new slider.

However, the version 11.2404.37.0 brought up some unlisted enhancements, as well. According to tech enthusiast, @PhantomOfEarth, the Snipping tool will soon have a Visual Search with Bing capability.

The feature is not rolling out yet, according to the enthusiast, but it should be available to all insiders within the next weeks.

If that is so, it could be a total game-changer for Bing, as a search engine. Let us explain. Snipping Tool is a very intuitive tool used to screenshot and record your current screen on Windows. With a simple shortcut, the tool can be used to take these screenshots in seconds, and they’re also automatically copied to the clipboard.

With the new capability, users can essentially visual search with Bing for everything they screenshot. For example, you can screenshot a mobile phone in a YouTube video, right-click on the screenshot image, and within seconds, you can use Visual Search with Bing to look up that mobile phone.

The capability is very similar to Google Images, or Google Lens. If Lens lets you take a picture of anything, or use existing screenshots on your mobile phone to look for essentially anything, Visual Search with Bing will do a similar job in the Snipping Tool on Windows.

It’s basically Google Lens for Windows users. It could also help Bing become more dominant in the search engine market, which Google currently dominates.

As we mentioned earlier, this new enhancement should be out in a couple of weeks, and generally available to Windows users, later this year.