SnipIT: A Review of a Simple, Yet Limited, Text-Sharing Tool

SnipIT: A Review of a Simple, Yet Limited, Text-Sharing Tool

SnipIT is an Internet Explorer add-in designed for a single purpose: to facilitate the emailing of selected text from a web browser window. While it achieves this basic function, its limitations significantly detract from its overall usefulness, making it a less-than-ideal choice in today’s landscape of readily available and more feature-rich alternatives. This review will explore the pros and cons of SnipIT, comparing it to similar tools and ultimately determining whether it’s worth considering in 2024.

Ease of Setup and Usage

One notable aspect of SnipIT is its simplicity. The application boasts a completely absent user interface, meaning there’s no standalone application to launch or manage. Instead, it integrates directly into Internet Explorer’s context menu. Once installed, highlighting text and right-clicking reveals the SnipIT option, allowing users to seamlessly send the selected text to their email client. This minimal approach contributes to the application’s remarkably low system resource footprint. It’s lightweight, requiring minimal CPU usage and doesn’t interfere with other browser extensions, ensuring a smooth browsing experience unaffected by its presence. This ease of setup and lightweight nature are clear advantages.

However, this simplicity comes at a cost. The lack of a dedicated interface means a complete lack of customization options. The application offers no settings to adjust behavior or preferences. This streamlined approach, while initially attractive for its simplicity, ultimately limits its functionality and adaptability.

Furthermore, SnipIT’s compatibility is severely restricted. It functions exclusively within Internet Explorer and only on older versions of Microsoft Windows. Users of other browsers, or those running more modern operating systems, are left out in the cold. This significantly restricts its potential user base and makes it obsolete for many potential users. This limited compatibility is a major drawback in the modern computing world. The necessity to use an outdated browser like Internet Explorer further adds to its impracticality for the average user.

Functionality and Limitations

SnipIT’s core function, as previously mentioned, is the direct emailing of selected text. After selecting text and choosing the SnipIT option, users are prompted to log into their email account if not already signed in. Supported email providers include Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, along with the default MailTo client in Internet Explorer. Upon authentication, a new email is automatically composed with the selected text already included in the body, complete with a link to the source webpage. Users then only need to add a recipient and subject before sending.

This process, while straightforward, highlights the application’s fundamental limitations. SnipIT handles only text; images and other media files are not supported. Moreover, there’s no ability to format the text within the email—no options to change font size, style, or color are present. The text is pasted directly as-is. This severely limits its usefulness for anyone needing to share more than just plain text, which is the vast majority of web-based content sharing needs.

The lack of support for less common or alternative email providers is another significant limitation. While Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, and Yahoo are widely used, many individuals and organizations rely on other platforms. The exclusion of these other email services restricts SnipIT’s potential use considerably.

Comparison to Alternatives

Numerous alternative applications and built-in operating system features offer superior functionality. Greenshot, for example, provides a more comprehensive screen capture and editing tool, while Droplr offers enhanced image and text sharing capabilities. Even the built-in Windows Snipping Tool surpasses SnipIT in flexibility and functionality. These alternatives frequently offer features like image capture, text editing options, different sharing methods, and cross-platform compatibility, surpassing SnipIT in nearly every aspect.

The existence of these superior and often free alternatives highlights SnipIT’s biggest drawback: its unnecessary existence. Its single, limited function is easily replicated and even improved upon by readily accessible tools that don’t require any additional downloads.

Data Privacy Considerations

The application’s privacy policy states that it collects cookies from websites from which text is copied, as well as data related to your email usage. However, the developers claim not to sell this data to third parties. While this information is available, users should always exercise caution and carefully review the privacy policy of any software before installation. The collection of cookies and email-related information, however minimal, warrants consideration.

Conclusion: Not Worth Downloading

In conclusion, SnipIT performs its advertised function of copying and emailing text from websites. However, its numerous limitations and the existence of superior alternatives render it an impractical and ultimately unnecessary choice. The restriction to Internet Explorer and older Windows versions, the lack of features, limited email client support, and absence of any formatting options far outweigh its simple ease of use. In the modern era of advanced screen capture and text sharing tools, SnipIT is an antiquated and outmoded application that offers little value to the average user. The time and effort required to download and potentially configure the add-in are far better spent using any of the numerous free and superior alternatives readily available. For simple text sharing, even a manual copy-paste operation often proves a more efficient and effective method.