Windows clipboard history: what Win+V does and where it stops

First, switch on the one Windows already has

1. 1

   Press Windows + V

   If history is off, Windows offers to enable it right there.

2. 2

   Or enable it in Settings

   Settings, System, Clipboard, and turn on Clipboard history.

3. 3

   Pin what you want to keep

   Each entry has a pin. Pinned items survive a restart; everything else does not.

The three limits nobody tells you about

• It keeps 25 entries. The twenty-sixth pushes out the first, and there is no setting to raise it.
• It is wiped every time you restart, except what you pinned. The address you copied on Friday is gone on Monday.
• Each entry is capped at about 4 MB, so a large image simply does not make it into the history.
• There is no search. Twenty-five entries is a list you scroll, and it does not tell a password apart from a shopping list.

When twenty-five is not enough

• CopyPaste keeps a history that survives restarts and that you can search.
• Clipboard content coming from password managers is ignored, so credentials never reach the history.
• History, images and settings can be exported and imported as a backup file.
• Free and open source under the GPL-3.0, for Windows and macOS.

Carry on with

• Clipboard history on macOS: why there is not one

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