The clipboard is a software facility that can be used for short-term data storage and/or data transfer between documents or applications, via copy and paste operations. It is most commonly a part of a GUI

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 environment and is usually implemented as an anonymous, temporary block of memory that can be accessed from most or all programs within the environment via defined programming interface

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

s. A typical application accesses clipboard functionality by mapping user input (keybindings, menu selections, etc.) to these interfaces.

See clipboard manager

Clipboard manager

A clipboard manager is a computer program that adds functionality to basic clipboard usage.All existing window managers provide only one buffer, overwritten by each new clipping....

 for third-party clipboard applications with advanced functionality.

Basic functions

The semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 of the clipboard facility varies from one operating environment to another, and can also vary between versions of the same system. They can sometimes be changed programmatically or by user preference. This can lead to user frustration when switching between environments with different clipboard semantics particularly as copy and paste operations often become embedded in the user's muscle memory

Muscle memory

Muscle memory has been used synonymously with motor learning, which is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to...

.

Most environments support a single clipboard transaction. Each cut or copy overwrites the previous contents. Normally, paste operations copy the contents, leaving the contents available in the clipboard for further pasting operations.

Data formats

Early implementations of the clipboard stored data as plain text without meta-information such as typeface, type style or color. More recent implementations support the multiple types of data, allowing complex data structures to be stored. These range from styled text formats such as RTF

Rich Text Format

The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....

 or HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, through a variety of bitmap and vector image formats to complex data types like spreadsheets and database entries.

For example cutting a range of cells in a spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

 and then pasting them into another sheet may preserve the underlying formulae and data, and may even translate intra-cell references, so that a "SUM(...)" calculation on a sub-range of the cells is converted to refer to the newly pasted copies of those cells.

When data is added to the clipboard by an application, it typically makes it available in as many different data formats as it can. This includes both native and simpler (or more common) formats that would have a higher chance of being recognized by a wide variety of applications. Thus, when data is pasted into another application, the format that is closest to that application's native format can be used, preserving as much of the original data as possible. In Windows in particular, the internal clipboard functionality of the operating system will automatically translate data from known advanced formats to simpler formats (such as RTF to plain text, or Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 to ANSI

Ansi

Ansi is a village in Kaarma Parish, Saare County, on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia....

 Text), increasing the likelihood that any given application can interpret some form of the original data.

Clipboard management

Modern GUIs often provide a clipboard manager

Clipboard manager

A clipboard manager is a computer program that adds functionality to basic clipboard usage.All existing window managers provide only one buffer, overwritten by each new clipping....

 which supports multiple cut and paste transactions. In this model the clipboard is treated as a stack or scrap book, with new cuts and copies being placed on top of the list of recent transactions. The standard paste operation copies the most recent transaction, while specialized pastes provide access to the other stored transactions. These managers generally also provide a window that displays the transaction history and allows the user to select earlier copies, edit them, change their format and even search amongst them.

Most environments do not save the clipboard contents to any persistent storage - when a user logs out or reboots his or her system the clipboard contents are cleared and forgotten.

Microsoft Windows

In some versions of the Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 operating system, the contents of the clipboard can be viewed at any time by using the Clipboard Viewer (Clipbook Viewer in Windows XP and 2000) application (clipbrd.exe). It can be run by pressing Windows key + r and typing clipbrd.exe. Alternatively, the program can be found in the C:/Windows/system32 for most computers. In older versions of Windows the common practice was to open a copy of the "Notepad" or "Wordpad" editor, and paste into that. Often these operations are available from the "Edit" pull down menu and they may be available via a context menu, usually accessible by context-clicking in the window or dialog entry that is to be cut from or pasted into.

The standard Windows key bindings are:
+ to copy data onto the clipboard+ to cut data to the clipboard+ to paste data from the clipboard

Alternative key bindings derived from the IBM Common User Access are:
+ is copy+ is cut+ is paste

the advantage of the alternative keys is that the fingers can stay close to the arrow and selection keys when you are editing a large body of text

The Clipbook Viewer was removed entirely in Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

.

Mac OS X

In the Macintosh Operating System

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 the contents can be viewed by selecting the Show Clipboard menu item from the Finder

Finder

Finder may refer to:* Finder , a core component of the Apple Macintosh operating system, is the graphical representation of the computer's file system* Finder , a comic book series by Carla Speed McNeil...

's Edit menu.

The standard Mac OS keybindings are:
- to copy data into the clipboard- to cut into it- to paste data from the clipboard.

Also available as a secondary, text-only clipboard, is an emacs

Emacs

Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...

-style kill-ring (a stack

Stack (data structure)

In computer science, a stack is a last in, first out abstract data type and linear data structure. A stack can have any abstract data type as an element, but is characterized by only three fundamental operations: push, pop and stack top. The push operation adds a new item to the top of the stack,...

 of text strings). This works in all applications that use standard Cocoa

Cocoa (API)

Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...

 text boxes

Text box

A text box, text field or text entry box is a kind of widget used when building a graphical user interface . A text box's purpose is to allow the user to input text information to be used by the program...

:
- to kill from cursor to end-of-line.- to yank from kill-ring to cursor.

X Window System

The X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

 commonly used on Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 and Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 systems provides a clipboard implementation as part of X Window selection

X Window selection

Selections, cut buffers, and drag-and-drop are the mechanisms used in the X Window System to allow a user to transfer data from a window to another. Selections and cut buffer are typically used when a user selects text or some other data in a window and pastes in another one...

. Selections are asynchronous, so data is copied and converted into the desired format only on-demand.

The usage and handling of various selections is not standardized. However most modern toolkits and desktop environments, such as GNOME

GNOME

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

 or KDE

KDE

KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...

, follow a widely accepted convention, outlined in the freedesktop.org

Freedesktop.org

freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....

 specification. One selection, CLIPBOARD, is used for traditional clipboard semantics, with shortcuts similar to Windows. Another selection, PRIMARY, is an X11-specific mechanism. Data is "copied" immediately upon highlighting and pasted with the third (middle) mouse button. This is usually separate from the CLIPBOARD selection and does not change its contents.

Clipboard extensions

A number of independent software vendors have extended the capabilities of local clipboard. One good example is making the local clipboard work with online applications by saving the clipboard data to the online location upon a copy or cut event, making this data available to online applications for pasting. Another example is a case when the software does not support copying from clipboard or does not allow you to paste a text from clipboard (for example, while logging into remote Windows server, you cannot copy and paste your user name and password). Tools like "Clipboard Typist" help you to overcome this limitation.

List of clipboard software

Name	Operating System	License
3D Clipboard	Windows	Freeware
AM8 Free Clipboard	Windows	Freeware
ArsClip	Windows	Open-Source(Delphi)
Capast	Windows	Freeware
Clipboard Evolved	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
Clipboard Master	Windows	Freeware
ClipboardMultiSharer	Cross-platform Cross-platform In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...	Open-source (GPL)
Clipboard Typist	Windows	Freeware
Clipcomrade	Windows	Open Source (LGPL)
Clipomatic	Windows	Freeware
Clipper Clipper A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century that had three or more masts and a square rig. They were generally narrow for their length, could carry limited bulk freight, small by later 19th century standards, and had a large total sail area...	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Open Source
Clipmenu	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Freeware
Clipmate 7	Windows	Commercial
Clyppan	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Freeware / Commercial
CopyPaste	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
CopyTexty	Windows	Freeware / Commercial
Cute Clips	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
Ditto	Windows	Open Source (GPL)
ECPText and Template software	Windows	Freeware / Commercial
Glipper Glipper Glipper is a clipboard utility for the GNOME panel. It allows users of Unix-like operating systems to access a history of X Selections, any item of which can be reselected for pasting. Glipper is often described as the GNOME counterpart to KDE's Klipper...  / Klipper Klipper Klipper is a clipboard manager for the KDE interface. It allows users of Unix-like operating systems running the KDE desktop environment to access a history of X Selections, any item of which can be reselected for pasting. It can also be used to react automatically if a certain text is selected...	Gnu/Linux, GNOME GNOME GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...  / KDE KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...	Open Source (GPL)
Iclip	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
Hot Copy Paste	Windows	Commercial
Jumpcut	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Open Source (MIT License)
PasteCopy.NET	Windows	Freeware
Pthpasteboard	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
Savvy Clipboard	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
Shapeshifter Shapeshifter (Software) Shapeshifter is a freeware clipboard history manager made by Flamefusion. It allows you to have several items in your Windows clipboard, which is normally limited to one single item....	Windows	Freeware
Spartan	Windows	Commercial
Stuf	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Commercial
Wlipper	Windows	Open Source (GPL)
Yankee Clipper 3 / X	Windows	Freeware / Commercial
copy+	iOS IOS iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...	Commercial

External links

• freedesktop.org - Clipboard standard specification
• Clipboard Developer Info - Common mistakes of clipboard implementation

Information for developers

• C# class implementation on Microsoft Windows