Let us say the quiet part out loud. The block in the video is useful - and it is small. It closes exactly one app, while a Windows screen can be copied through half a dozen other doors. Here they all are, listed honestly, so you can decide what protection your situation actually needs.
The natural hope behind this fix is that sensitive data "won't be screenshot-able" once the tool is off. Taken literally, that is more than any single-app block can deliver. This page is the friendly correction: the Snipping Tool is one capture route among many, and a screen a person is allowed to read is a screen that can be copied. None of this makes the block pointless - the last card covers what it genuinely is good for. But plan your security with open eyes.
One door closed, the rest open. That is not a failure of the block - it is the nature of screens. The block's job is friction and a clear policy line.
The oldest capture route in Windows is untouched by this policy. Print Screen copies the whole screen to the clipboard; Alt + Print Screen copies just the active window. Paste into Paint, Word, a mail or a chat, and the supposedly protected data walks out in seconds. Windows 11's setting that makes Print Screen open the snipping interface changes only which app answers the key - the clipboard copy underneath is a separate, older mechanism that stands on its own.
Built into Windows for gamers, Xbox Game Bar (Win + G) takes screenshots with Win + Alt + Print Screen and records full screen video. It is a different app with a different owner inside Windows, and the Snipping Tool policy says nothing to it. On a locked-down exam or data desk, Game Bar is usually the second thing a determined user tries - and the first thing they find working.
ShareX, Greenshot, Lightshot and a shelf of browser extensions all do this job well, several of them better than the built-in tool. Unless the same PCs also restrict who can install software - standard user accounts, allow-listing, managed app stores - blocking one bundled Microsoft app while the internet is open changes very little. This is the honest boundary of every app-block: it only holds inside a wider software policy.
And then there is the route no Windows setting can close: a phone camera pointed at the monitor. The photo is a little soft and completely sufficient. Add to it the cousin cases - a PC used inside a virtual machine can be captured from the host window, and a remote session can be captured from the client side - and the principle is complete:
Any screen a human can read can be copied. Security that forgets this sentence is theatre, however good it feels on the day it is deployed.
Plenty - honestly assessed. It stops the casual, thoughtless snip, which is how most data actually drifts out of offices. It makes a written rule enforceable: "the tool is off because the policy says so" ends arguments that a poster on the wall cannot. It protects exam and training rooms against the easiest route, which is the route most people take. And it prevents the purely accidental screenshot of a sensitive screen during screen sharing. Sell the block as hygiene and friction - that is a real, respectable value. Just never sell it as a vault.
Watch the block itself in the video - just keep this page's list in mind when you describe what it achieves.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYou can remap or disable it with keyboard tools and some endpoint software, and it adds friction. But Game Bar, third-party tools and phone cameras remain open, so it still does not add up to a guarantee.
Not for ordinary business data on an ordinary desktop that a person is allowed to view. Protected content paths exist for specific DRM video and a few specialised apps, but a readable screen can always be photographed.
Because most data leaves through casual habit, not determination. Removing the easiest route, together with a clear written policy, stops the casual majority and makes deliberate misuse unmistakable.