Pro screenshots on Windows: annotate, blur, copy text, pin
A screenshot is often the fastest way to explain something — and the easiest way to leak something. Here is how the upgraded capture tool in MoLock 2.9 helps you do the first without the second, plus a new shortcut between your phone and your PC.
Mahmoud Mohamed · 8 min read
ArrowShapesTextStepsBlurPixelateCrop
Name
Card no.
Address
Continue
123PinCopy textCopyShare
Why the humble screenshot deserves better tools
Most of us take screenshots every day: to show a colleague where a setting lives, to report an error, to keep a booking reference, to send a relative the button they should press. The built-in tools get you a picture, and that is usually where they stop. Everything after — pointing at the right place, explaining the order of the steps, hiding the account number in the corner — happens in another app, or does not happen at all.
That last part is the one that matters for privacy. A screenshot captures everything that happened to be on the screen: the notification that arrived a second earlier, the open tab with your bank, the name of a customer in a list. MoLock 2.7 put a capture tool behind PrintScreen so that annotating and blurring would be one step away. Version 2.9 turns it into a tool you can rely on for precise, shareable, safe images.
Selecting exactly what you mean
Press PrintScreen and pick a region, a window or the full screen. If you would rather keep Windows' own behaviour for the key, you can give it back in Settings and open the MoLock tool from its own shortcut instead.
Region selection is where 2.9 changes the most. As you move the pointer, a magnifier shows the pixels under it at a large scale, together with the position and the size of your selection. You no longer have to guess whether the edge includes the one-pixel border of a dialog or cuts a letter in half.
Snapped to window edge
The selector also snaps. Hover over a window, a dialog or a clear element on the screen and the selection outline locks onto its edges; click to accept, or drag to draw your own rectangle as before. For documentation and support messages this means clean, consistent crops without a second pass in an image editor.
The editor: explain it once, clearly
After you select, the capture opens in the editor. The tools are deliberately few, and each one solves a real problem:
- Arrows and shapes — point at the button, frame the field, circle the error code.
- Text — a short label right next to the thing it explains, in Arabic or English.
- Numbered steps — click where the first action happens and a "1" marker appears, then "2", "3" and so on. It is the quickest way to turn one screenshot into a how-to: "open this menu, choose this item, press this button".
- Blur and pixelate — hide names, numbers, faces and messages.
- Crop — trim what you do not need after the fact.
ArrowShapesTextStepsBlurPixelateCrop
Name
Card no.
Address
Continue
123PinCopy textCopyShare
Why a real blur matters
A common mistake is to "hide" something with a semi-transparent highlighter or a thin shape. On a bright screen it looks covered; adjust the brightness of the image, or simply look closely, and the text is often still readable. Some apps also keep annotations as a separate layer that can be moved away later.
MoLock's blur and pixelate are applied to the picture itself: when you save, copy or share the capture, the original pixels in that area are replaced in the resulting image. There is nothing underneath to recover from the file you send. For best results, cover the whole sensitive area with a little margin, and prefer pixelate for short items such as account numbers — a stronger effect is always better than a pretty one.
Pin and Copy text: screenshots you can work with
Two new buttons in the editor change what a screenshot is for. It is no longer only something you send; it is something you use.
Pin to screen
Pin turns the capture into a small window that floats above everything else. Move it wherever it is useful and keep working underneath. Typical uses: copying figures from a table into a form, following instructions while you click through Settings, comparing two versions of a design, or keeping a reference code in view while you type it somewhere else.
Pinned
IBAN EG38 0019 0005 …
REF 2026-11-4821
AMT 1,250.00
Stays above every window — drag it, change its opacity, close it when you are done
Copy text
Copy text runs text recognition (often called OCR) on the capture and puts the words on your clipboard, in Arabic and English. It is the answer to all the text you can see but cannot select: an error dialog, a scanned document, a slide in a video call, a photo of a sign, a subtitle in a paused video.
Text copied · 3 lines
إيصال استلام رقم 4821
Order #4821 · 2 items
الإجمالي: 1,250 ج.م
Arabic and English · check the text before you use it
Recognition is good, not perfect. Small or decorative fonts, low-contrast text and mixed directions in a single line can produce mistakes, so read the result before you paste it into anything important — especially names, numbers and amounts.
Recording: the details that make a clean video
Since 2.7 the same tool records the screen as MP4 or as a GIF. In 2.9 the recorder gains the controls that separate a usable recording from one you have to redo:
- A countdown before recording starts, so the first seconds are not you reaching for the window.
- Pause and resume, to skip a loading screen or a password field.
- Microphone and/or system audio, chosen separately — narrate a tutorial, capture the sound of an app, or both.
- Click highlights, so viewers can follow where you clicked.
- A floating control bar that stays out of the recording: you can see and use it, the video does not show it.
RegionWindowScreenVideoGIF
The control bar never appears in the video
Recording still stops by itself if the screen locks. For a deeper look at video versus GIF, trimming and sizes, read Screen recording and GIFs without extra apps.
Sharing without losing control
From the editor you can copy the result to the clipboard, save it as a file, or create a share link. A share link is encrypted on your PC before upload; the key lives only inside the link, and you choose the expiry, an optional password and a download limit. The service stores a file it cannot open.
Share linkend-to-end encrypted
molock.pages.dev/s/7Hq2Xk#k=Vb3pQe…9sLw
Reaches the service: the file number only
The key: stays in the link, never sent
Expires in 7 daysPassword3 downloadsDelete after first download
Phone ↔ PC clipboard: the missing shortcut
How often have you found a link on your phone and then emailed it to yourself, just to open it on the PC? Or typed a long Wi-Fi password from a phone screen, character by character? MoLock 2.9 closes that gap.
In your MoLock Account, open the clipboard on your phone, paste or type text or a link, and send it: it lands directly on your PC's clipboard, ready for Ctrl+V. In the other direction, when clipboard sync is on, what you copy on the PC appears in the same list on your phone.
ClipboardE2EE
Send to DESKTOP-MO's clipboard
https://maps.app.goo.gl/x7Qe…
Send to PC
Delivered · paste with Ctrl+VFrom your PC
- Order no. 2026-11-48212 min ago
- molock.pages.dev/en/remote/10 min ago
- A sensitive item was not savedLooks like a password
Everything in that list is end-to-end encrypted: it is locked on your phone or PC and unlocked only on the other one, so the service carries data it cannot read. The rules from the 2.7 clipboard still apply:
- Text that looks like a password is never recorded.
- Card numbers and one-time codes vanish after 60 seconds.
- A synced item lives for 24 hours by default; a pinned item for 30 days.
The full clipboard — history, snippets, transforms and the wrong-keyboard-layout fix — is explained in The clipboard, reimagined.
Three workflows worth stealing
1. A support how-to in one image
- Snap the window. Press PrintScreen, hover over the app's window and click — the selection locks onto its edges.
- Number the clicks. Add steps 1, 2 and 3 where the person should click, and one arrow for the button that matters most.
- Hide what is yours. Pixelate your email address, account number or any customer name in the picture.
- Send it. Copy it into the chat, or create a share link that expires in a day.
2. An Arabic quote from a scanned PDF
Scanned documents are pictures of text, so you cannot select a sentence. Capture the paragraph, choose Copy text, check the result against the page — Arabic diacritics and unusual fonts deserve a second look — and paste. If you need the same passage visible while you write, Pin the capture next to your document.
3. A long password or link from the phone
The Wi-Fi card is in your hand, or the link is in a message on your phone. Open your MoLock Account on the phone, paste or type the text in the clipboard and send it to the PC. Paste it on the PC. Because one-time codes and card numbers disappear after a minute and nothing that looks like a password is kept in the history, the shortcut does not leave sensitive text lying around.
Explain it once, hide what is yours, and send only what you meant to send.
Which tool for which job
| You want to… | Use | Tip |
|---|---|---|
| Show where to click | Numbered steps + one arrow | Fewer markers read better than many |
| Hide a number, name or face | Pixelate or blur | Cover the whole area with a margin |
| Get text out of an image | Copy text | Check names, numbers and amounts |
| Keep a reference in view | Pin | Move it next to the form you are filling |
| Show a process with motion | Recording (MP4 or GIF) | Use the countdown and click highlights |
| Send a file safely | Share link | Short expiry, optional password |
| Move text from phone to PC | Account clipboard → PC | Paste on the PC with Ctrl+V |
Where to go next
See every capture and clipboard feature on the Tools page, including phone ↔ PC clipboard and the clipboard history. And if you need more than a picture of your PC — the PC itself — MoLock Remote lets you control it from any browser, phone included.