7

It's faster for me to open a new Windows Explorer instance with Windows + E than it is to find an open one, and I really wish that when I have Snipping Tool running, I could hit Ctrl + Alt + S and either open a new Snipping Tool instance or at least make the existing one the active window.

Can I do either of these things?

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
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Thalecress
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3 Answers3

4

I have not found a way to get multiple instances open. At least I can't find a way natively.

Getting it to be active is another story.

Pin it to your taskbar, and then use Win plus the number (key) that represents where it is on the taskbar.

Example:

enter image description here

In this example I'd hit Win+5

If you hit that shortcut while it's already open it switches to the already open instance.

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
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3

Coupled with Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007's response to be able to quickly launch and return to Snipping Tool, I like to use an application to stage my captures. I chose this method since there is not a way to launch multiple instances of Snipping Tool yet.

paint.net uses image previews at the top of its window to act like tabs. I like to stage my snipped images this way:

Screenshot of paint.net 4.0.13

paint.net will evaluate the contents of the clipboard when creating a new image. If the contents of the clipboard is an image, it will use the dimensions from it for the canvas size. I accept these default dimensions, and paste in the image.

Note: this only works when creating a new image after Paint.NET is already open. See below regarding this.

When launching paint.net with an image already in the clipboard, I still paste it into the mismatched size. It will prompt to expand the canvas. The default, selected command is Expand Canvas; so I just press Enter. The image that was just pasted is still selected by paint.net. I then run the Image → Crop to Selection tool, and I'm left with just my screen capture from Snipping Tool. 

Useful, relevant keyboard shortcuts for Paint.NET:
-----------------------------------------------------
Ctrl + N         = New Image
Ctrl + Shift + X = Crop to Selection

I re-verified this behavior on the most recent, public version as of 2017-03-15: paint.net (Final 4.13.6191.1824)

PeterFnet
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2

This is a little hacky / annoying but it is the ONLY way I've found to get multiple instances of the Snipping Tool open at the same time. I usually do this in the morning to open up 4 or 5 of them that I can use throughout the day.

The process:

  1. Open a Snipping Tool window
  2. Set to delayed snip at 2 or 3 seconds
  3. Click New to start the snip which gives you time to click the Snipping Tool icon in taskbar to open a new instance.
  4. Key is that you have to click to open the new one while the 2 or 3 second snipping delay is happening (tricks windows into thinking it isn't open anymore).
  5. Now you MUST minimize the new instance that was just opened.
  6. Repeat again as many times as you want to open x instances.

*Note: My GIF below didn't show it but at the end of this I had 4 instances open minimized in the task bar. I could have clicked them each to open up and show 4 instances simultaneously open but I forgot to include in my video.

GIF Example

Murf
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