How to Use Snipaste: Snipping, Annotation, and Color Picker

Snipaste turns a screenshot into something you can keep working with. Press F1 to start snipping, C to pick a color, and F3 to paste the clipboard back onto the screen as a floating window. After you capture a region, press Space to annotate it with rectangles, arrows, text, and more. Everything below works in the free version for personal use; the paid PRO license applies to Snipaste 2.0 and later for business use.

Start a snip with F1

Press F1 anywhere to enter snipping mode. Snipaste auto-detects UI elements, so the selection box snaps to buttons, panels, and window edges instead of forcing you to drag pixel by pixel. When you need exact boundaries, you still have pixel-level control to adjust the selection.

The snipping toolbar also exposes the color picker: while in snipping mode, press C to sample a color from the screen.

Pick a color with C

Press F1, then C, to activate the color picker. Snipaste reads the color value under the cursor, which is useful when you need to match a hex code from a design or copy a color out of an app that doesn't expose it.

A practical workflow: press F1, move to the target pixel, press C to grab the color, then press F3 to pin the color info as a floating window so it stays visible while you work elsewhere.

Paste as a floating window with F3

F3 takes whatever is in your clipboard and pastes it as a topmost floating window. The clipboard source can be:

• An image
• Plain text
• HTML text
• Color info text
• Image files (PNG, JPG, BMP, TGA, ICO, TIFF, GIF)

This is the feature that separates Snipaste from a plain screenshot tool. Instead of saving a capture to disk and reopening it, you pin it on top of your other windows and keep referencing it.

What you can do with a pinned window

Click-through is the one worth calling out: it lets a pinned reference image sit on screen without blocking the app you're actually working in.

Annotate a capture with Space

After snipping, press Space to open image editing. The annotation tools include:

• Rectangle and Ellipse for highlighting regions
• Linestrip and Arrow for pointing at things
• Pencil and Marker pen for freehand marks
• Text for labels

This is the step where a raw screenshot becomes something you can send to a teammate or drop into a bug report without opening a separate editor.

Other things that matter in daily use

• History play back: use , and . to step back and forward through your capture history, so a snip you dismissed isn't gone for good.
• Multi-screen support: snips work across multiple monitors.
• HiDPI (Retina) support: captures stay sharp on high-density displays.
• Drag & drop, grouping, and auto backup & restore are also available for managing pinned windows.

A quick end-to-end example

Say you're reviewing a UI and want to flag a spacing issue:

1. Press F1, let auto-detect snap to the element, adjust to the exact pixels.
2. Press Space, draw an Arrow at the problem and add a Text label.
3. Copy the annotated result, or press F3 to pin it beside your editor while you fix the code.
4. If you need the exact background color, press F1, then C, and sample it.

That loop — snip, annotate, pin, sample — is the core of how Snipaste fits into a working session. The manual covers the hidden features if you want to go further.