Microsoft’s newest operating system update supports Copilot — its new AI-powered assistant. The company calls it “one of the most significant updates to Windows 11 in years” and says it will help users get more done faster.
As its name suggests, Copilot is an assistant that helps you keep track of things. You can summon it via a keyboard shortcut (Win+C) or clicking the Copilot icon in the taskbar. From there, you can ask it to summarize web page text, turn on dark mode, suggest a productivity playlist, and more.
Copilot is a bit like Cortana 2.0. Microsoft built the original virtual assistant into Windows 10 but unceremoniously killed it in favor of a more powerful, centralized version that works across devices. When you invoke Copilot, the AI will transform what you type into a query that runs through Bing, which can then return answers.
In addition to Copilot, the 22H2 update includes several other AI features. The MS Paint app will get a facelift by introducing generative AI capabilities for painting and digital creation. It also introduces a preview of the Paint Cocreator tool, which can create unique images by giving it a prompt and describing what you want the image to look like.
Paint also adds support for dark mode and improved zoom controls. It will now match your system theme color, allowing you to use the classic presets and the slider and pinch-to-zoom gesture on touchscreen computers. The app will also let you pin a brush to the taskbar or start menu to access it quickly.
Microsoft is also updating its built-in Snipping Tool for screenshots, making capturing a specific window or region of the screen easier. You can draw a free-form shape or use the pre-defined shapes to screenshot an entire window, a document, a browser page, or another area. When finished, you can copy the snip to another app for further editing or share it directly from the Snipping Tool.
If you need to move information across computers, the Snipping Tool will allow you to use its built-in cloud integration with OneDrive. You can select any screenshot or Snipping Tool clip and open it on another computer to save, edit, and then delete it from the original computer.
The updated Snipping Tool will be available to everyone when the update rolls out on November 1. It can be found in the Start menu, through a taskbar search, or by opening it from the desktop. It’s also possible to pin the Snipping Tool to the taskbar, giving you quick access to its various functions from any computer. You can see a video demonstrating these changes in action below. For more, check out Microsoft’s blog post on the update.
