Microsoft is testing changes to how the print screen button works in Windows 11, which causes it to open the Windows Snipping Tool instead of copying a screenshot to the clipboard.

Since Windows 95, pressing the print screen keyboard button in Windows would create a screenshot of the current screen and copy it to the clipboard.

This screenshot can then be pasted into documents, image editing software, or email chats to quickly share or edit the image.

As reported by Latest version of WindowsMicrosoft is currently testing a modification of Windows 11 beta preview builds 22621.1546 and 22624.1546 (KB5025310) which may irritate some users using the print screen button for the past 28 years.

With this change, pressing the print screen button will no longer copy the screenshot to the Windows clipboard. Instead, it will open the Windows Snipping Tool, allowing you to create an image using the built-in snipping tool.

Luckily, for people who don’t like this change, like me, you can disable it in Windows 11 settings by going to Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard and disabling the “Use the print screen key to open the snipping tool” setting, shown below.

You can also manually disable this change by creating the PrintScreenKeyForSnippingEnabled DWORD value under HKCU\Control Panel\Keyboard and put it to 0as indicated by the registry file below.

Microsoft said there is no guarantee that new features from Windows 11 preview builds will make it into final builds.

However, since it is a minor feature that is already complete and can be disabled, and since it promotes another Windows tool, it would be surprising if it did not make it a public version of Windows in the future.