Clipboard History

CleverKeys maintains a history of everything you’ve copied — text, images, videos, PDFs, and more — making it easy to paste items from earlier.

Quick Summary

What	Description
Purpose	Access previous clipboard items (text + media)
Access	Swipe SW from Ctrl key, or add Clipboard to Extra Keys
Capacity	Configurable (default 50 items)

Accessing Clipboard History

Method 1: Ctrl Key Swipe

Find the Ctrl key on the bottom row
Swipe SW (down-left) to activate switch_clipboard
Clipboard history panel opens
Tap any item to paste

Method 2: Extra Keys

If you’ve added a clipboard key to Extra Keys:

Tap the clipboard icon in your extra keys row
History panel opens
Tap item to paste

Method 3: Per-Key Customization

You can assign clipboard access to any key’s short swipe:

Go to Settings > Activities > Per-Key Customization
Select any key
Assign switch_clipboard to a swipe direction

Using Clipboard History

Paste from History

Open clipboard history
Tap any item
Item is pasted at cursor position

Delete Item

Text entries: tap the ✏️ edit button on the item — the delete row appears with the edit controls. Tap 🗑 delete there.
Media entries: media can’t be edited inline, so tap the expand chevron instead — the delete row shows directly on the expanded entry.

Deleting from the Pinned or Todos tab removes the item from that tab only (the copies are independent).

Swipe to Delete

Swipe an item left or right to delete it from the current tab. The item disappears at once and the results row shows Deleted with an Undo button for 5 seconds; tap Undo to bring it back. A short, quick flick also deletes; a swipe that goes less than about a third of the way and is released slowly springs back. Up-and-down drags still scroll the list, and taps and long-presses work as before.

Works on all three tabs and removes the item from that tab only, exactly like the delete button.
Not available in selection mode, while an item is being edited, or in the tag panel.
The delete happens for real when the 5 seconds end, or straight away when you close the panel or the keyboard, switch tabs, change the search or filters, start selecting or editing, or swipe another item.
TalkBack: each item offers a Delete action (in the actions menu) that works the same way.
Turn it off with Settings > Clipboard > Swipe to delete clipboard entries.

Long-Press to Copy

Copy an item to the system clipboard without pasting it into the current field:

Open clipboard history
Long-press any item’s text
A “Copied to clipboard” toast confirms the action
The text is now on the system clipboard — paste it in any app

This is useful when you want to store text for use in another app without inserting it into the current text field.

Pin Items

Keep important items from being removed:

Pin an Item

Open clipboard history (History tab)
Tap the item to expand it
Tap the 📌 pin button
Item is added to the Pinned tab

Unpin Item

Switch to the Pinned tab (📌)
Expand the item and tap the 📌 pin button to unpin
Item is removed from Pinned tab

Pinned items:

Appear in the dedicated Pinned tab
Don’t auto-expire
Don’t count toward history limit

Pinned Entry Shortcuts

You can bind pinned clipboard entries to swipe gestures using the paste_pinned_1 through paste_pinned_5 commands. This lets you insert frequently used pinned text with a single swipe, without opening the clipboard panel.

Entries are numbered by position (most-recently-pinned first):

paste_pinned_1 inserts your most recently pinned entry
paste_pinned_2 inserts the second, and so on up to paste_pinned_5

To set this up, go to Settings > Activities > Per-Key Customization, choose a key and direction, select Command, and search for “paste_pinned”. See Per-Key Actions for full details.

Todo Items

Mark clipboard items as to-do reminders:

Add to Todos

Open clipboard (History or Pinned tab)
Expand the item and tap the ✓ todo button
Item is added to the Todos tab

Mark as Done

Switch to the Todos tab (✓)
Expand the item and tap the ✓ todo button to remove it from todos
Item is removed from Todos tab (still in history)

Todo items:

Appear in the dedicated Todos tab
Can also be pinned (both flags independent)
Useful for quick reference or follow-up

Media Clipboard

CleverKeys automatically captures images, videos, PDFs, and other files you copy to the clipboard.

Supported Media Types

Type	Examples	Thumbnail
Images	JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF	Photo preview
Animated	Animated GIF, animated WebP	First frame + play badge
Videos	MP4, QuickTime	Video frame preview
PDFs	PDF documents	First page preview
Other files	ZIP, documents	MIME-type icon

How Media Clipboard Works

Copy an image/video/file in any app (Gallery, Chrome, Files, etc.)
CleverKeys captures it automatically in the background
A thumbnail appears in clipboard history
Tap the media entry to paste it into the current app (via commitContent)

Media Paste

Media is pasted via Android’s commitContent API — the receiving app must support it
Most messaging apps (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp) and text editors support image paste
If the app doesn’t support media paste, a “Cannot paste media here” message appears
Long-press a media entry to copy the media URI to the system clipboard
Expand a media entry (chevron) for the extra actions — pin, todo, tags, and 🗑 delete. The stored media file is removed from disk once no tab still references it

Media Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Save Media Entries	Enable/disable media capture	On
Text Only	Hide all media, show only text entries	Off
Max Media Size	Skip copied media larger than this size (1-50 MB)	10 MB

To access: Settings > Clipboard section (expand it) or Settings > Activities > Clipboard Settings.

[!TIP] If you only want text in your clipboard and find media entries distracting, enable Text Only. It hides existing media entries from the panel and stops new media from being captured.

Tab System

The clipboard pane organizes items into three tabs:

Tab	Icon	Description
History	📋	Recent clipboard history (default)
Pinned	📌	Items you’ve pinned for quick access
Todos	✓	Items marked as to-do reminders

Switching Tabs

Open clipboard pane
Tap the tab icon (📋, 📌, or ✓) in the header row
Active tab is fully visible (alpha 1.0), inactive tabs are dimmed (alpha 0.5)

Item Actions by Tab

Action	History Tab	Pinned Tab	Todos Tab
Pin button	Pins item	Unpins item	Pins item
Todo button	Adds to todos	Adds to todos	Removes from todos
Delete	Removes from history	Removes from Pinned	Removes from Todos
Swipe left/right	Removes from history (Undo 5 s)	Removes from Pinned (Undo 5 s)	Removes from Todos (Undo 5 s)
Paste	Pastes to editor	Pastes to editor	Pastes to editor
Long-press	Copies to system clipboard	Copies to system clipboard	Copies to system clipboard

Pin, todo, and tag buttons appear when an entry is expanded (tap the entry or its chevron). Delete lives behind the ✏️ edit button for text entries and behind expansion for media entries (see Delete Item). Any entry can also be swiped away (see Swipe to Delete).

Filter by Clipping Size and Work with a Batch

Open the filter controls and choose minimum and maximum clipping sizes. Size filtering combines with the current search and other filters in the active History, Pinned, or Todos tab. An inverted range cannot be applied. Cancel leaves the previous range unchanged; clearing all filters also clears the size range.

To delete, copy, merge or clean a batch, tap Select in the results row. Each entry gets a checkbox: tap an entry (or its checkbox) to select or deselect it. The selection bar offers:

Select all matching (checkbox icon) — adds every entry that matches the current search and filters, on every page, not just the one you see. When all matches are already selected, the same button deselects them.
Clear selection — deselects everything, including entries the current search hides.
More actions (⋮) — Add to Pinned, Add to Todos, Merge and Clean (described below). A tab is not offered as a target for its own entries.
Delete selected (trash) — asks for confirmation, then deletes the batch.
Exit selection (✕) — leaves selection mode without deleting.

The selection is kept while you change the search, the size range or other filters and the page, so you can build one batch from several searches — for example every clipping over 100 kB plus everything matching “log” — then deselect a few. The count (“N selected”) stays visible. Long-press selects instead of copying while selection mode is on.

The confirmation shows the number of clippings and their combined size before anything is deleted; Cancel keeps the selection. Only copies in the current tab are deleted — copies in other tabs remain there. A clipping edited or removed after you selected it is skipped, and the result line reports how many were deleted. Stored media is removed only when no tab references it.

A selection belongs to one tab: the other tab icons are hidden until you exit, so one count and one set of actions are always in view. The selection is kept when you close the clipboard panel, hide the keyboard, rotate the phone, or switch to another field or app; reopening the panel goes back to that tab with the same entries checked (any that were deleted or edited meanwhile drop out). It ends only when you tap Exit selection or an action completes. If Android closes the keyboard in the background, the selection is lost.

Add to Pinned / Add to Todos copy every selected entry, text or media, into that tab; the originals stay. Entries already there are reported, not duplicated, and the tab icon pulses.

Merge creates one new History entry from the selected text entries, oldest first, one per line. Media entries are skipped, the originals stay, and the result must fit the maximum clipping size. The confirmation shows a preview. If any selected entry is private, the merged entry is private too.

Clean tidies the selected text entries in place: it removes spaces and tabs at line ends and joins lines that were broken inside a paragraph (as text copied from a PDF or an e-mail often is), rejoining a word split by a hyphen at the line end. Blank lines, lists, short lines (such as addresses), links and code keep their line breaks. Only the entries in the current tab change, never their copies in other tabs. The confirmation shows how many will change and a preview; entries that need no cleaning are left alone.

Size describes clipping payload bytes, rather than guaranteed disk space recovered. SQLite allocation and shared media can make the recovered space smaller. To clear Android’s current clipboard while keeping saved clippings, assign the separate Clear system clipboard command.

Pagination

For large clipboard histories (>100 items), pagination improves performance:

Items are displayed 100 per page
Pagination bar appears at the bottom when needed
Shows current page / total pages (e.g., “1 / 6”)
◀ and ▶ buttons navigate between pages
Search still searches ALL items across all pages

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ [◀]         3 / 6              [▶]  │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

History Panel Layout

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 📋 📌 ✓  [Search...]  🔽  [▼]      │ ← Tabs + Search + Filter + Close
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Recently copied text here...  [✏️ ▼]│ ← Text entry (edit + expand)
│ [thumb] photo.jpg · 2h ago      [▼]│ ← Image entry with thumbnail
│   └ expanded: [📌] [✓] [🏷] [🗑]    │ ← Actions shown on expansion
│ [▶vid] clip.mp4 · Yesterday     [▼]│ ← Video entry with play badge
│ Another clipboard item...     [✏️ ▼]│ ← Text entry
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│ [◀]         1 / 3              [▶]  │ ← Pagination (if >100 items)
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

Privacy Features

Sensitive Flag (the reliable protection)

On Android 13+, password managers mark copied credentials with the system IS_SENSITIVE flag. With Respect Sensitive Flag enabled (the default), CleverKeys never stores those clips. This works regardless of which password manager you use.

Password Manager Exclusion (best effort)

Exclude Password Managers is a best-effort extra layer: it skips a copy only when Android reveals that a known password manager is in the foreground. That is rarely possible without usage access — which CleverKeys never requests — so don’t rely on it alone; the sensitive-content flag above is the dependable mechanism.

Password Field Detection

CleverKeys automatically detects password fields:

Behavior	Description
Don’t save	Password field text not saved to history
Mask display	Sensitive items may show masked

Tips and Tricks

Pin frequently used: Pin items you paste often
Clear sensitive data: Regularly clear history with sensitive info
Quick access: Add clipboard to Extra Keys for one-tap access
Customize access: Assign clipboard to any key via Per-Key Customization

[!TIP] The Ctrl key’s SW subkey is switch_clipboard by default on most layouts.

Settings

Setting	Location	Description
Enable History	Clipboard section	Turn history on/off
History Size	Clipboard section	Maximum items to keep
History Duration	Clipboard section	Auto-expiry (default: never)
Max Item Size	Clipboard section	Per-item text size limit (64-1024 KB)
Save Media Entries	Clipboard section	Enable/disable media capture
Text Only	Clipboard section	Hide media, show only text
Max Media Size	Clipboard section	Skip media larger than this (1-50 MB)
Pinned Tab	Clipboard section	Show/hide the Pinned tab
Todo Tab	Clipboard section	Show/hide the Todos tab
Exclude Password Managers	Clipboard section	Best-effort skip of copies from known password managers (rarely detectable)
Respect Sensitive Flag	Clipboard section	Honor Android 13+ IS_SENSITIVE (the reliable protection)

Clear History

To clear clipboard history, use the export/import features in Settings > Backup & Restore, or delete items individually (see Delete Item).

Common Questions

Q: Why don’t I see clipboard history?

A: Check that it’s enabled in Settings > Clipboard section (expand it).

Q: How do I access clipboard quickly?

A: Swipe SW (southwest/down-left) on the Ctrl key, or add a clipboard key to your Extra Keys.

Q: Why wasn’t my copied text saved?

A: It may have been from a password field, or marked sensitive by a password manager (Android 13+ IS_SENSITIVE flag, skipped by default).

Copies made while the keyboard is hidden are saved as usual, as long as CleverKeys is your selected keyboard. If you copied something while another keyboard was selected, or while Android had closed CleverKeys in the background, it was not seen at the time. When the keyboard next opens, CleverKeys checks the current clipboard and saves that clip if it has not seen it before. Only the most recent copy can be recovered this way; earlier copies from that gap are lost. A clip you deleted from history, or one that was skipped as sensitive, is not added back.

Q: Can I recover deleted items?

A: No, deleted items cannot be recovered. Pin important items.

Q: Why don’t I see images in my clipboard?

A: Check that Save Media Entries is enabled and Text Only is off in Settings > Clipboard section, and that the file is under your Max Media Size limit. The source app must also provide a content URI when copying (most apps do).

Q: Can I paste an image from clipboard into a messaging app?

A: Yes — tap the image entry in clipboard history. It uses Android’s commitContent API. The receiving app must support media input (most modern messaging apps do).

Text Selection - Select text efficiently
Shortcuts - Keyboard shortcuts for clipboard
Privacy - Privacy settings

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