This is just another change for change sake in a long list of stupid that does nothing but get in the way of productive people trying to get things done. Spam in start menu. Dumbed down context menus you have to remove before you can get at what you want. Real control panels hidden behind dumbed down ones with incomplete functionality. Calendar gone from bottom right clock app without trying to google how to get it back. Windows randomly opening in background. Windows randomly disappearing. Round corners on all windows broken until apps catch up. Windows snapping all over the screen in dumb ways. Computer randomly bricks due to unauthorized OS or FIRMWARE updates. Never mind all the stupid changes to office and outlook we're enduring. I'm surprised I didn't get fired for rolling out Windows 11 where I work.
You're getting downvoted, but this is precisely what has been going on.
The root cause is that Microsoft hired a bunch of UX designers to revamp Windows 11, but all of them are Mac users. They're basically copying the MacOS style into Windows, whether it makes sense or not. They don't even use Windows, so they're not eating their own dog food. To them, "success" is that it looks superficially "Mac-like", job done.
Like you, I'm getting fed up with these changes, most of which are objectively worse.
I also tried the "new" Outlook, and it was staggeringly bad. Not only was it shockingly slow, the UI got dumbed down and there's wasted whitespace everywhere. Essential information is hidden, and the whole thing looks like a PowerPoint presentation of what an email client looks like instead of an actual piece of usable software.
I also read about these designers, I really don't get it.
Then again, it fits the ongoing mess of GUI civil war happening in Redmond across Forms, WPF, UWP, WinUI, MAUI, MFC and of course one gets to put Blazor everywhere there is a Web widget, including the previous set of GUI frameworks.
Get to keep making those changes for yearly employee evaluation.
Same applies to other commercial OSes, Google IO hardly brigns anything new that I care about for Android since several years, I already lost track of how many times they have rebooted background services or notification APIs.
The Year of Desktop Linux would be nice, yet even there I lost track of how many audio stacks, laptop support, distribution specific changes just because, and what not, has happened during the last 25 years.
Ubuntu added something like that in 22.04, and it's a pain. Pushing "Print Screen" brings up an interactive thing to decide what you want to capture. You used to be able to capture an image to a file. Now you have to bring up something to save the clipboard.
I am pretty torn on the Ubuntu behavior. On one hand, the pop-up is obnoxious, and it breaks my mental model of what the keyboard button is supposed to do. On the other, screens have gotten so big that it is rare I actually want to save my entire multi-monitor desktop, and only want a tiny viewport.
Alt-Printscreen does work as the original keypress, but I only remember this shortcut after I have already hit Printscreen and see the window appear.
the Win+Shift+S pulls up this same feature. I actually quite like it as its the windows analog for snipping. Or maybe i changed that myself...I dont recall doing it though.
That said, one thing that does bug me is the Ubuntu terminal behavior change that no longer respects right clicks for paste, or ctrl+v for that matter.
I had to go digging to restore that and was causing some havoc with vim as instead of pasting when in Insert mode, it would toss me in some -- Insert (visual)-- mode
It's not too far off as the change affects user ergonomics, but it's not the first place one would think of, you're right. I'd prefer an hierarchy like "Devices -> Keyboard -> Shortcut Keys".
On fedora, I use alt + print screen to capture the current active window. I practically always maximize my windows so it works for me. Assuming Ubuntu hasn’t messed with gnome too much, this should work. See if it works better for your workflow?
Looks like it's a new default with the option to disable.
Is there any way to set the default to another program? Or is Microsoft going to try to lock this down like the whole Microsoft Edge, EdgeDeflector, microsoft-edge:// uri stuff?
Can you elaborate? I have been using GreenShot for ages now and haven't had a single issue with it. It works perfectly well on my 4K monitor. What issues are you experiencing?
So is mine, but I hate the delay. I miss many moments because "Snipping Tool" sometimes takes too long to load. At least PrtScr was consistently instant. That said, the feature is behind a setting and can be turned off if needed.
Wasn't Microsoft the "let's not break backwards compatibility for any reason" company?
Coming from software development, we do have tests that insert a screenshot into the report in case they fail, and I'm assuming we are not the only ones that found the PrtScr button to be useful for that
Couldn't they set it so the first time print screen is hit they prompt what the shortcut should be? Quietly changing decades old shortcuts would aggravate the hell out of me, even if I like the change.
I say this, but now I do recall how obnoxious sticky keys was.
Microsoft has a history of shitty behavior like this. One of the first things I change when I need to use a new computer is change alt tabs to windows only instead of treating edge tabs like windows.
I have a WSL2 cronjob that does an rsync to the Pictures folder, but its ridiculous how dogshit it is, not only obvious missing functionality but how it takes multiple seconds to do a capture.
For some reason it in't saving on my machine, but I should check it again
> but its ridiculous how dogshit it is, not only obvious missing functionality but how it takes multiple seconds to do a capture.
So much this.
What's even more mind-boggling is that they've had this behaviour for almost three decades now. And they are clearly adding functionality to it, so it's not like it's a neglected feature. And still, they can't figure out the simple idea of saving the screenshot.
I guess they took inspiration from the competing Greenshot, where indeed it does remap that button to start the sniping tool right away. I've been enjoying this for many years already :D
They probably took inspiration from the decades of snipping tools on Linux doing exactly that on key press. PrintScreen was AFAIK already in use as a shortcut for the snipping tool in KDE and GNOME when i started using them in the mid '00s
This may be a change compared to thirty years of OS defaults, but it makes total sense to me. People use phones and tablets more than computers these days and on those platforms rich screenshot tools are the norm.
I can't remember the last time I actually wanted a screenshot of all my three screens. I've always used the button in combination with alt or switched to Win+Shift+S for snipping tool.
Assuming Microsoft leaves the quick shortcuts (alt/shift PrtScr) only power users seem to know about in place, I think this will be an improvement for most people.
For automation tools, I hope Microsoft will at least expose a setting for this, though I'd expect them to do it in a registry key if they do it at all. It's not exactly hard to get a screenshot through the Windows API (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.graphics.c...) so getting around that without settings shouldn't be too much of a problem once tooling gets up to date either.
On windows 10 I have purposely enable the setting to open Snip & Sketch. When I press the button, all the screen goes darker, and then I can simply drag to select a rectangle. When I let go of the mouse, the selection is copied to the clipboard and no extra app is kept open, except for a notification that disappears in a few seconds.
I'm now ready to paste it everywhere, which is my main user case.
Do I need to paint on it? Click the notification and edit as you want, then control+c and continue.
Need to save to a file? Click the notification and press the save button.
Need to make a window screenshot or a full desktop one? After the screen goes dark you have buttons at the top to change the selection mode.
To me this makes the most sense, saving directly to a file that you later need to find and open to edit/copy is rather slow, except if you want to user it as a "visual background log" maybe...
Great, now add an option to autosave the screen captures to a folder vs the temporary one that I have to make a script to rsync them out of now before they are expired.
The funny part of this is how it's completely unintuitive on both Windows and Mac in different ways. The print screen button requires pasting from the clipboard into an image editor in Windows. On Mac, you have the Command-Shift-[number] combos.
That said, the Mac combos are nicer, as you can just directly select the whole screen, window, or rectangular area to screenshot with the correct shortcut.
If only there was a good compromise that was cross-platform...
The good thing about mspaint is I can close my eyes, press the windows key, type mspaint return and I can be reasonably sure it will open without installing anything.
Win+R is kind of sacred for me. It remembers the last command so I prefer to keep simple things out of it.
It is easy to press windows and type mstsc and then press enter. This way I don't have to press up and down to get to that long command should I need it in the run command.
