How Windows 10’s New Clipboard Feature Works

[tarekma7]

New clipboard to be part of Windows 10 Redstone 5 update

Back at the 2017 edition of the Build developer conference, Microsoft showcased a new feature called Cloud Clipboard that was supposed to be part of the next Windows 10 update in order to change the way content is copied from one location to another.

In this case, however, the location term had multiple meanings, as Microsoft expanded the clipboard to work not only for folders on the local drives, but also for multiple devices.

In other words, the Cloud Clipboard was developed from the very beginning to allow seamless synchronization of content copied to the clipboard from one device to another using the power of cloud, all as long as the same Microsoft account was used.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update launched without Cloud Clipboard as Microsoft needed more time to complete its development, and now that work on Redstone 5 is advancing, it looks like the company is finally ready to bring this feature to users.


An evolved clipboard
Windows 10 build 17666 is the first one to introduce the new clipboard feature, only that as compared to the original concept that Microsoft presented at the 2017 Build, it comes with several extra features to enhance the way you work with the clipboard.

Needless to say, this is just an early version of the new clipboard and other features will be added in the coming builds, but this release should still help you figure out how the new tool is supposed to work.

First and foremost, the standard clipboard option in Windows borrows features from more advanced third-party clipboard managers, and it can remember not only the last entry to the clipboard, but the most recent 25 of them. In order to see and manage content in the clipboard, just press the Win key + V and a small popup in the lower right corner should show up to let you see what’s available in the clipboard.

Microsoft has also added options like pin, so you can save a specific entry for later use, which is particularly useful if you want to paste the same content several times at various times. You can simply click one clipboard entry to copy it.

The new clipboard feature can save pretty much anything, including plain text, links, and images weighing in less than 1MB. Photos, however, didn’t show up in the new popup during our test.




Syncing the content between PCs is possible if you are logged in with the same account on multiple devices and the synchronization feature is enabled in Settings > System > Clipboard > Sync across devices.

Additionally, you are also allowed to disable the popup and return the clipboard feature to the original version where only the last entry is saved.

And because having content synced between devices could be a privacy concern, you can also clear clipboard data from both your devices and Microsoft’s servers from the Settings app. Keep in mind, however, that pinned items won’t be removed, so if you want to get rid of them, you first have to unpin all entries.

At this point, everything works pretty smoothly, except for the images bug that I told you about earlier. Without a doubt, however, this problem is going to be fixed in the next builds of Windows 10.

Most likely, the target is to bring the new clipboard feature to users with the debut of the Redstone 5 update in the fall, but as with everything currently in the works, there’s no guarantee this would happen until development is finalized. Redstone 5 is projected to debut for Windows 10 users in the fall of this year.

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