Press Win + V and select Turn on, or go to Settings > System > Clipboard and switch on Clipboard history. Windows then keeps your last 25 copied items (text, HTML and images up to 4 MB each) and clears all but pinned items when you restart. For more items, search or other paste formats, add a clipboard manager such as Ditto, CopyQ or PowerToys Advanced Paste.
Pasting older items
Clipboard history is off until you turn it on. After that, everything you copy with Ctrl + C is added to the list. To paste an older item, put the cursor where you want it, press Win + V and select the item. It pastes as if you had pressed Ctrl + V.
Limits and restarts
The 25 entries can be text, HTML or bitmap images, up to 4 MB each. When the list is full, the oldest items are dropped to make room for new ones.
A restart clears everything you haven't pinned. If you copied something important this morning and restarted after an update, it is gone.
Pinning
Press Win + V and select the pin icon next to the item. New copies don't push pinned items out, and they survive a restart. Pin the text you paste often, like an address, a standard reply or a reference number, but keep the list short: pinned items sit in the same small panel as everything else.
Can clipboard history sync between my PCs?
Yes, if you sign in with the same Microsoft account or work account on each PC.
- Open Start > Settings > System > Clipboard.
- Turn on Clipboard history across your devices.
- Choose Automatically sync text that I copy, or the manual option.
With the manual option, nothing syncs until you press Win + V and select the sync button on a specific item. That is the safer choice if you copy anything private.
How do I paste as plain text from clipboard history?
Press Win + V, select See more (the three dots) next to the item, and choose Paste as text. The text then takes on the formatting of the place you paste it instead of keeping the fonts and colors it was copied with.
PowerToys Advanced Paste has a direct shortcut for this: Ctrl + Win + Alt + V pastes the current clipboard as plain text without opening any window. It runs on your PC and doesn't use AI.
Clearing the history
Select Clear under Clear clipboard data in Start > Settings > System > Clipboard, or press Win + V and choose Clear all. Either way, everything except pinned items is removed, on your PC and in the cloud. To remove a single item, select See more next to it and choose Delete.
Passwords
A clipboard history is a list of everything you copied, so passwords are a fair worry. Windows lets an app mark what it copies so that it stays out of clipboard history, out of sync to your other devices, or both. Password managers can use this. KeePass added an option in version 2.41 not to store data in the Windows clipboard history and the cloud clipboard, and turned it on by default.
Not every app marks its copies. Check your password manager's clipboard settings for an option like this, and if you sync clipboard history, prefer the manual option so only the items you choose leave your PC.
Clipboard managers
The built-in history is a good short-term memory, but with 25 items a busy afternoon pushes out the morning, and nothing unpinned survives a restart. It also pastes an item only as copied or as plain text. A clipboard manager keeps more, for longer, and can paste the same content as Markdown or a table. Four maintained options:
| Tool | Price | What it adds | Where your data stays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ditto | Free, open source (GPL-3.0) | Saves every copy for later: text, images, HTML and custom formats. Opens from a hotkey or the tray | On your PC; no login, cloud or telemetry, per the project |
| CopyQ | Free, open source (GPL-3.0) | Tabs, filtering, editing items, notes and tags, a command-line interface and scripting. Also runs on Linux and macOS | On your PC |
| PowerToys Advanced Paste | Free, open source | Win + Shift + V window that pastes as plain text, Markdown, JSON or a file, reads text from images, can show clipboard history, and has an optional Paste with AI feature | Non-AI actions run on your PC; Paste with AI goes to the provider you set up, or a local one |
| OceanBreeze Clipboard | $1.99 once | Clipboard history one flick away on a ring under your pointer: search by words or by what you remember, paste as plain text, Markdown, a table or translated text | On your PC; copies from password managers are never saved |
Ditto and CopyQ are full clipboard managers, with long histories you can organize and many settings. Advanced Paste is about changing the format of what you paste, and if you already use PowerToys, it costs you nothing to try.
OceanBreeze is a radial menu: hold Caps Lock and a ring of eight tools opens around your pointer, in any app. Clipboard is slot 2 on the first ring, so your history is a hold and a short flick away instead of a shortcut. The history lives in a database on your PC, you can clear it in Settings > Privacy, and copies that password managers mark as private are never kept. What a radial menu is explains the ring idea, and how to remap Caps Lock covers what happens to the key itself.
OceanBreeze also has AI actions for whatever you select, which you can run with your own API key or a free model on your PC. Using AI on selected text in any Windows app compares that with the other options.
Common questions
Do passwords end up in clipboard history?
Only if the app that copied them lets them. Windows lets an app mark a copy so it stays out of clipboard history and sync, and password managers such as KeePass use this. Check your password manager's settings to be sure.
How do I delete one item from clipboard history?
Press Win + V, select See more (the three dots) next to the item and choose Delete. Clear all in the same panel removes everything except pinned items.
Is there a free clipboard manager for Windows 11?
Yes. Ditto and CopyQ are free and open source under GPL-3.0. PowerToys, which includes Advanced Paste, is free and open source too.
Does PowerToys Advanced Paste use AI?
Only its optional Paste with AI feature, which goes to the provider you set up or to a local one. The other actions, such as plain text paste with Ctrl + Win + Alt + V, run on your PC.
Sources
- Clipboard in Windows (Microsoft Support)
- Clipboard Formats: Cloud Clipboard and Clipboard History Formats (Microsoft Learn)
- Advanced Paste in PowerToys (Microsoft Learn)
- Microsoft PowerToys (Microsoft Learn)
- How to paste as plain text from clipboard history in Windows 11 (Geek Rewind)
- How to enable and use clipboard history on Windows 11 (How-To Geek)
- KeePass 2.41 released
- Ditto clipboard manager (GitHub)
- CopyQ clipboard manager (GitHub)
Keep reading
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