Microsoft Introduces a Redesigned Windows Clipboard Experience

For as long as people have been running Windows, users have been using the Copy and Paste commands to store and retrieve data from the Windows Clipboard. In the Windows 10 Insider build 17666, which was released yesterday, Microsoft is showing off their Cloud Clipboard feature, which introduces what could be biggest upgrade to the Windows Clipboard since it was created.

With this new version of the Windows Clipboard, users will be able to see and retrieve clips from a Clipboard History Viewer and to share Clipboard contents, called Roamed Text, with other devices, such as phones and computers that they are logged into. Along with these new features, is a new Settings panel where you can configure whether these features are enabled and if clips can be shared across devices.

Unfortunately, at this time the new Clipboard can only share clips between other computers you are logged into that are running the Windows 10 Insider build 17666 and later. Copying and pasting between your PC and mobile devices is slated for the future.

Let's take a look at what's available now.

Configuring the new Windows Clipboard

With this Insider release, Microsoft has added a dedicated Clipboard settings screen where you can configure various aspects of the new Windows Clipboard. By default, Clipboard history is not enabled and you will not be able to share clips with other devices you are logged into.

To enable the Clipboard history, which allows you to save and retrieve previously stored clips, you can enable the "Save multiple items" setting.

To make your clips available on other computers that you are logged into, and eventually your phone, you can enable "Sync across devices". Once this is enabled, you will then be able to configure whether you wish to automatically sync text that you copy to other devices or if you want to specify as needed the clips you want to share.

Finally, you can clear all the contents of the Clipboard and it's history by clicking on the "Clear" button under "Clear clipboard data".

The new Clipboard History Viewer

Once you have enabled the Clipboard to save multiple items, you can open the Clipboard History Viewer by using the Windows+V keyboard combination. This will open up a small dialog that displays any content that you have historically saved to the Clipboard, with the first item being the data currently stored in the Clipboard.

To remove an item from the history, you can simply delete it by clicking on the X button for that item. If you remove the first item, which represents what is currently stored in the Clipboard, then you are essentially clearing the Clipboard and the Paste command will not work until you save something else to the Clipboard.

If you want to paste something from the history, just click on the clip and it will automatically be inserted into the open app if it supports that type of content. For example, you cannot paste an image into Notepad.

Finally, if you configured the Clipboard to not automatically sync your clips between other devices, you will notice a small cloud icon that when clicked will share the particular clip with other devices. It should be noted that you can only share clips with other devices if they are under 100kb in size.

Finally, there is a Pin option, which I could not figure out what it does. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.

As you can see, the new upcoming Clipboard experience is much more advanced than the current one. Having a history will make it much easier to find content that you may have copied over by accident. At the same time, this could also leave sensitive content, such as passwords, stored in your Clipboard History that anyone with access to your PC can retrieve.