Android P developer preview reveals screenshot editor Markup

It’s a big day at Google with the newly released Android P developer preview giving us some hints of what to expect from the next version of Android. One of the most exciting revelations so far, spotted by 9to5Google earlier today, is Markup, a fairly basic built-in screenshot editor that let’s you doodle and crop your screenshots.

Is it the most groundbreaking new feature? Probably not. But it promises a bit of added convenience, and that’s always worth celebrating.

Some of us like to save time with screenshots. Sure, you can send a link, quote an article, or tweet some context, but who has time for that? The beauty of screenshots is that you can do something like capture a very specific moment in a video and share it immediately without saying something like “check out what I’m talking about at 1:33.” A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.

But sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes you still need to crop out part of the shot. Or you want to emphasize one detail without necessarily cropping out the rest of it.

You can currently do that, either with the photo editing software already on your phone, or with apps that give you even more editing options, but that means at least one or two extra steps. I’m sure we’ve all wished we could just edit our screenshots at the moment we capture them.

Enter Markup.

So far, the tools are rudimentary, and include a pen and marker tool, undo and redo functions, and basic cropping. Features will likely get better over time, but this is an exciting start. Google had already been working on a similar app, but having Markup built in will save us all the time of downloading another app.

How do you currently go about quickly editing your screenshots? Will Markup make your life easier? Let us know what you think in comments.