Where Can I Find Clipboard History on PC or Mac?
Welcome back to the next installment of a series of technical tips from Lifehacker, Tech 911 . You write your tough questions, and we give tough answers, a little humor and a little puzzle if you have a particularly tough question.
Lifehacker reader Sunny writes this week:
“Many times I copy something to the clipboard and accidentally overwrite it before pasting it by copying something else. How can I find the “history” of what I copied to the clipboard? Is there any app that can help? “
You didn’t mention which operating system you’re using, Sunny, but that’s okay! I’ll cover both Windows and macOS so that everyone can figure out how to recover what they accidentally overwrite in their clipboard. (And yes, I have this problem too, so I’m glad we’re talking about it.)
For starters, I will assume that you are using Windows 10 (if you are a Windows user) and are using the latest version of the operating system. Open the Settings app, tap System , scroll down the left sidebar a bit and tap Clipboard. I’ve already included the clipboard history, so your screen should look something like this, but you’ll want to include the clipboard history if it’s unchecked.
Scroll down a bit and you can also use this screen to clear your clipboard history:
Now, when you press Windows Key + V (not CTRL + V), the clipboard history will appear on your screen. Click anything in the list to paste it where the cursor is. It is so simple.
Enabling clipboard history on macOS
You will need a third party application to enable real clipboard history on your Mac – the built-in clipboard only stores one item and only one item. Some of the options that you can explore include CopyClip , the Paste (which is very expensive), by Alfred 4 , PasteBot and Clipy open source code .
They are all pretty easy to use and should give you a reliable method of saving what you have copied (for a short time, if nothing else). I’d probably pick free or low-cost apps first – especially those that have a trial of some sort – so you can see if it suits your needs before paying anything, if you even decide to go that route. … In fact, it should be a core component of the operating system itself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple adds this feature to a future version of macOS at some point.