Copilot is getting a new screenshot tool, hopefully without the privacy risks this time

Microsoft’s Copilot has had a surprisingly bumpy relationship with screenshots. What most of us perceive as a simple action, Copilot has somehow managed to turn into a logistics nightmare both for itself and for the users.

Now, Microsoft wants to improve that relationship, hopefully with more success this time. A new entry on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap reveals that the company is actively developing a dedicated screenshot tool directly within the Copilot interface.

The roadmap entry ID 558105 says:

“Give users a fast, built-in way to capture screenshots and include them in Copilot prompts, helping them communicate visual context more easily and receive more accurate, actionable assistance.”

We don’t have too much info on the new screenshot tool besides this short announcement from the roadmap. Still, the roadmap entry can give us a good idea of what the feature might be like.

Users will likely be able to capture their screen and feed the image directly to the AI without having to leave their current workflow. Since the screenshot feature is coming to the Microsoft 365 suite, it should be available in all Copilot interfaces, including major programs like Excel and Teams, alongside Word and PowerPoint. Microsoft will only bring the new screenshot feature to Copilot on desktop for now.

So, for example, if you’re working on a sheet in Excel, you can click a dedicated button, and Copilot will natively take a screenshot of your workspace and automatically move it to chat to analyze it and give you insights. This means you won’t have to take a screenshot using Windows’ native tool and manually upload it to Copilot as a file attachment.

Microsoft announced Windows Recall in 2024, a feature designed to automatically take screenshots of your activity on Windows. This quickly proved to be a privacy disaster. Recall was originally built to capture users’ screens every few seconds, making people feel like they were under constant surveillance.

In response, Microsoft heavily scaled back Recall and transitioned it to an opt-in experience, but still hasn’t removed it entirely. Maybe the new screenshot feature for Copilot will finally replace the need for Recall, or at least serve as a much safer alternative that won’t pose an immediate risk to users’ privacy.

We will keep an eye on the roadmap and provide an update when the feature begins rolling out to the public.