Make Windows Better Expert tips for every version
46
WINDOWS 10One of the best hidden options
in the screenshot tool ‘Snip &
Sketch’ is adding coloured
borders to make your grabs stand out.
This can be useful if you want to give
them more prominence in a document
or presentation. Search for and open
‘Snip & Sketch’ in Windows, click the
‘See more’ button at the top right (three
horizontal dots), then click Settings.
At the bottom of the next page, click
the ‘Snip outline’ slider to turn it on
(^1 in our screenshot). This will reveal
below a colour square^2 and a
thickness slider^3. Choose your colour
and thickness and you’ll see what it
looks like in the preview box^4.
Now take a screenshot in ‘Snip &Sketch’. Press Windows key+Shift+S to
take the shot (or the PrtScr button if
you have that option turned on the
‘Ease of Access’ settings). When you
save and open the screenshot you’ll see
that the border has been applied.Add borders to your screenshots
WINDOWS 10 & 11
Convert HEIC image files
In 2017 Apple adopted
HEIF (High Efficiency
Image File Format) as its
default image format, calling it HEIC
when introduced in iOS 11. It uses a more
advanced method for compressing files
that takes up less storage space.
Windows doesn’t support HEIC files,
but you can install apps from the
Microsoft Store to convert them into
JPEGs and other formats.One of the best is ‘iMazing HEIC
Converter’, which is ideal when you have
many photos to convert. Search for it on
the Microsoft Store (or visit http://www.snipca.
com/41954), then click the blue Get
button. Once you’ve opened it, just drag
and drop into it the files you want to
convert. You can choose between
JPEG (^1 in our screenshot above) and
PNG formats, whether you want to
preserve the EXIF data^2 , and how high
you want the quality to be^3.
To finish, click Convert, choose the
folder you want to save to, then click OK.
You’ll now have copies with the same file
names but saved as JPEGs instead of
HEIC files.WINDOWS 11
See your battery levels
Windows 11 shows you what
your laptop’s battery levels have
been over the past 24 hours or
seven days. Press Windows key+I to open
Settings, then click System on the left
followed by ‘Power & battery’ in the
middle. Now click ‘Battery usage’ and
choose your time period from the menu:
last 24 hours or seven days.
Choose the former and you’ll see
battery levels represented as 24 vertical
bars – hover over one to see the level for
that hour (38 per cent at 9am in our
screenshot below^1 ). You’ll also see how
long the screen has been on, off and in
Sleep mode^2. These figures will be for
the hour you have selected, or for the past
24 if you’ve haven’t clicked a bar.
Select seven days and you’ll see a
continuous chart from the past week.
Hovering over a date doesn’t show a
percentage because this can change overthe course of a day, but clicking it does
reveal the screen on, off and sleep times.WINDOWS 10 & 11
Remove the audio
from videos in Clipchamp
Microsoft’s new video
editor Clipchamp (search
for it in the Microsoft
Store or visit http://www.snipca.com/41964)
makes it easy to remove the audio from
clips. When you drag a video on to the
timeline, you’ll see the audio (speaker)
icon appear (^1 in our screenshot below).
Click this, then the Separate Audio button(^2). When the process ends you’ll see your
audio file below the video on the timeline
(^3). You can place multiple versions of the
audio into the timeline by dragging it
from the Your Media section^4.
You can now move this audio clip
elsewhere in the timeline, or remove it by
clicking it and selecting it, then clicking
the Delete (bin) icon above the timeline.
1
2
3
4
1 2
3
1 1
2
3
25 May – 7 June 2022 • Issue 632
2
4