Microsoft is ending assist for Home windows 10 on October 14, 2025. Effectively, probably not. Enterprise prospects can go for the paid multi-year Prolonged Assist Replace (ESU) program, whereas customers can get one further yr of assist by shelling out $30, spending 1,000 Microsoft Rewards factors, or without spending a dime utilizing the Home windows Backup app to sync their settings to the cloud. Nevertheless, these are all simply choices for Home windows 11 naysayers to think about, not a mandate from Microsoft.

With assist for Home windows 10 winding down, I used to be simply taking a look at how my expertise would differ as I think about an improve from Home windows 10 to Home windows 11. A few of you would possibly recall that proper now, I’m utilizing Home windows 11 on my work PC whereas Home windows 10 serves because the each day driver on my private PC. In the identical piece, I emphasised how, regardless of the passage of 4 years, Microsoft hasn’t been in a position to persuade me to make use of Home windows 11 as my sole each day driver.

In the identical vein, as I used each my laptops over the weekend, I noticed that Home windows 10 is definitely far inferior in comparison with Home windows 11 in a single explicit space that I take advantage of closely. That’s, the Snipping Software / Snip & Sketch expertise.

Home windows 10 has a reasonably muddy expertise on the subject of taking screenshots. It’s because it affords two apps for a similar function within the default set up of the working system. You may have the legacy Snipping Software software program, which gives a comparatively primary UX for taking screenshots and modifying them. I discover it good however pretty simplistic when it comes to capabilities, because it doesn’t have superior modifying choices.

Then you’ve gotten the comparatively trendy expertise within the type of Snip & Sketch, a Microsoft Retailer app that’s really a rebrand of the Display screen Sketch expertise that was first launched again in June 2018 by means of Home windows 10 Insider Preview construct 17704. This app has longer delays of as much as 10 seconds in display screen captures and extra modifying choices. I’m not a fan of the clean canvas UI that you simply get once you open the app and have but to take a screenshot, however I respect the extra performance.

Lastly, now we have the Snipping Software expertise in Home windows 11, which builds upon the foundations of Snip & Sketch, and is my most popular piece of software program. For starters, it provides one other 5-second delay step for screenshots, along with 3 seconds and 10 seconds. This can be a candy spot for me because it affords simply the correct quantity of delay in most of my workflows. It additionally has display screen recording capabilities, that are utterly absent within the Home windows 10 model.

However maybe my favourite function in Snipping Software on Home windows 11 is the flexibility so as to add shapes to my screenshots. As somebody working professionally within the tech house, not a day goes by that I haven’t got to take a screenshot after which emphasize sure sub-areas of the seize by means of rectangles, circles, or arrows. I do that when writing technical guides, capturing cases of information errors, and sending content material to colleagues for additional discussions on bugs. That is one thing I sorely miss when I’m utilizing Home windows 10 in a private capability, the place I nonetheless want these shapes when writing information articles on Neowin or simply conversing with pals utilizing screen-grabs as a reference.

The Snipping Software in Home windows 11 has different helpful options which might be absent on Home windows 10, too. These embody textual content actions equivalent to mechanically detecting textual content in photos for copying as free-form textual content or a knowledge desk, in addition to the flexibility to mechanically redact telephone numbers and e mail addresses in a single fell swoop. There may be additionally a fast navigation button for Edit in Paint, however that is not one thing I take advantage of closely. Microsoft is not simply resting there on the subject of the Snipping Software in Home windows 11 both. The corporate can also be testing screen-recording as GIFs as a functionality within the software program proper now. Snipping Software in Home windows 11 is not excellent, however it’s a superior expertise to Home windows 10, in my opinion.

And all of this makes me a bit unhappy that we possible do not get the identical options within the Home windows 10 snipping expertise. Effectively, there isn’t any technical limitation as to why Microsoft cannot backport these enhancements to Home windows 10, however there’s most likely no motivation to take action contemplating that the working system is reaching the top of its life (EoL). If something, this most likely serves as an honest differentiator between Home windows 10 and Home windows 11. Maybe Snipping Software is what’s going to lastly get me to replace to Microsoft’s newest OS.