For those new to this, the Clipboard is where your computer temporarily holds text you've copied, making it easy to transfer it between different apps. Usually, copying something new means the old copied text is lost. But, Windows 11 has a cool feature called Clipboard history. This lets you see and use everything you've recently copied, all in one place.

Turning on Clipboard history makes life easier since we're all constantly copying and pasting things. Plus, accessing your Clipboard history is super simple with just a few keyboard shortcuts.

How to Enable and Use Clipboard History

Clipboard history can be quickly enabled by heading to the Settings app on your Windows 11 device. The process is simple, easy, and pretty straightforward.

To do so, first, head to the Start Menu and click on the ‘Settings’ app present under the ‘Pinned apps’ section on the menu to continue. Otherwise, type Settings in the menu to perform a search for it. Alternatively, you can also press the Windows+I keys together on your keyboard to open the app.

Then, make sure you have selected the ‘System’ tab from the left sidebar of the Settings window to proceed.

After that, scroll down to locate and click on the ‘Clipboard’ tile from the list to continue.

Now, on the next screen, locate the ‘Clipboard history’ tile and click on the toggle switch present at the far right edge of the tile to bring it to the ‘On’ position.

That’s it, you have now turned on the Clipboard history on your Windows 11 computer. However, there’s a shorter, a bit more convenient route that you can use to enable the Clipboard history on your computer.

To open Clipboard on Windows 11, press the Windows + Vthe keys together on your keyboard. This will bring up the Clipboard window on the bottom right corner of your screen. Then, click on the ‘Turn on’ button present in the window to turn on clipboard history.

Once you have enabled the clipboard history on your Windows 11 device, you can summon it any time as and when required by pressing the Windows+V keys together on your keyboard.

Now, to use the clipboard for your convenience, first head to any file/location and select the text/image/file that you wish to copy. Then press the Ctrl+C keys together on your keyboard to copy the selected text to the clipboard.

Now, head to the file/location where you wish to paste the text, make sure your cursor is exactly at the place where you wish to paste the text in case you are pasting the text into a file.

Now, again press the Windows+V keys together on your keyboard to bring up the clipboard history, to paste a particular text that you have copied earlier, simply click on its individual tile to paste the text in a file at your cursor location.


Removing or Pinning Items in Clipboard History

There are multiple ways you can remove items from the Clipboard history. Moreover, if there’s a single item that you wish to copy and paste multiple times and always need handy, you can also pin it to the top of the Clipboard.

To remove an item right from the Clipboard history, bring up the Clipboard history by pressing the Windows+V keys together on your keyboard. Then, from the Clipboard window, locate the item that you wish to delete and click on the ellipsis icon present on the top right corner of each item’s individual tile to reveal options.

Once the options are revealed, click on the ‘Trash’ icon to remove the item from the list.

In case you wish to remove all items from the Clipboard history in a single go, from the Clipboard History window, click on the ‘Clear all’ button present on the top right corner of the window to proceed. All the copied items will be removed from the list except the pinned items.

One more method to clear Clipboard history is through the Settings app. This method is helpful in case you are already in the Settings app tweaking some settings and wish to get the Clipboard all nice and clean.

To do so, from the Settings app window on your Windows 11 device, make sure you have selected the ‘System’ tab present on the left sidebar to proceed.

Then, from the right section of the window, scroll down to locate and click on the ‘Clipboard’ tile from the list to continue.

Then, on the next screen, locate the ‘Clear clipboard data’ tile from the list and then click on the ‘Clear’ button present at the far right edge of the tile to completely clear all the data.

And that’s it. Those are all the ways you can clear your clipboard as and when needed.

If you wish to pin a particular item on the clipboard history window, press the Windows+V keys together to bring up the clipboard window on your screen. Once visible, locate the item that you wish to pin from the list. After you have located the item, click on the ‘pin’ icon present in the bottom right corner of each item’s individual tile to fix the item’s location at the top of the list.


Syncing Clipboard Data Across Devices

With Windows 11, if you have the Clipboard history enabled, you can also sync the Clipboard data with your devices automatically. This allows you to copy the text on one device and then paste it on another device completely hassle-free. However, both devices must be connected to the Internet and logged in with the same Microsoft account in order for this feature to work. However, the functionality has been disabled by default, and you would need to turn it on to use it across all your devices.

Syncing of Clipboard history data can be easily enabled from the Settings app. First, head to the Start Menu and click on the ‘Settings’ tile icon present under the ‘Pinned apps’ section to continue. Otherwise, type Settings in the menu to perform a search for it. Alternatively, press the Windows+I keys together on your keyboard to open the app.

Next, make sure you have selected the ‘System’ tab from the left sidebar of the window to proceed.

After that, from the right section of the window, scroll down to locate and click on the ‘Clipboard’ tile to continue.

Then, on the next screen, locate the ‘Sync across devices’ option and then click on the ‘toggle switch’ present on the far right edge of the tile to bring it to the ‘On’ position. After that, locate the ‘Automatically sync text that I copy’ option present right underneath the ‘Sync across devices’ tile and click on the radio button preceding it. This will ensure you do not have to sync the clipboard data manually.

On the flip side, if you wish to only manually sync the data across the devices, locate the ‘Manually sync text that I copy’ and click on the radio button preceding the option to select it.

That’s it. You have now enabled the syncing of clipboard data across your supported Windows devices.


How to Disable Clipboard History in Windows 11

Though clipboard history definitely adds convenience to using your computer in day-to-day life. However, there can be a possibility that you might not require the feature, or since this feature is highly dependent on your device’s onboard RAM, it is negatively impacting your performance. Hence, in these scenarios turning the feature off might make more sense.

Disabling the clipboard history is a very simple and straightforward process and can be quickly done using the Settings app.

First, head to the Start Menu and click on the ‘Settings’ icon tile present under the ‘Pinned apps’ section to continue. Otherwise, type Settings in the menu to perform a search for it. Alternatively, you can also press Windows+I keys together on your keyboard to open the app.

Now, from the Settings window, make sure you have selected the ‘System’ tab present on the left sidebar to proceed.

After that, from the right section of the window, scroll down to locate and click on the ‘Clipboard’ tile from the list to continue.

Then, from the next screen, locate the ‘Clipboard history’ option and click on the toggle switch present on the far right edge of the tile to bring it to the ‘Off’ position.

That’s it. Clipboard history has now been disabled on your Windows 11 computer.


There you go, folks. Hopefully, this guide will walk you through how to use the Clipboard history on your Windows 11 device.