Comment by the_lucifer

> Half the time I can smack Esc and Snipping Tool will go away. The other half of the time, I have to mouse over and click the X to close it. There is no pattern to when Esc does/doesn't work.

What I have noticed is to let it load the snipping UI first and start listening for your keystrokes. If you hit escape really quickly, right after you accidentally hit print screen, it will not go away and require you to manually mouse over and hit the X. But if you wait for a second and then hit escape, it almost always registers my keystroke. It's almost like hitting escape really quickly just quits the keyboard listener instead of the actual snipping tool.