Linux Clipboard History for Ubuntu / Pop OS
By @edent
· pop_os ubuntu · 7 comments · 200 words · read ~2,833 times.
Mobile phones have been one of the greatest drivers of functional enhancements for computing interfaces. I use the clipboard history feature on Android multiple times per day. Rather than copy one item, then paste it, then switch back, then copy another, then switch back etc - I just copy two items, switch app, and paste them where I want.
For some reason, I never considered doing that on Linux - until now!
Clipboard Indicator is a handy little Gnome extension. It sits on your dock monitoring your clipboard. Click the icon and get a list of what you've copied.
They're keyboard and mouse selectable, and you can set some to be permanently remembered.
There's a brief settings screen, but I found the defaults were suitable.
Security and Privacy
Having things like passwords in your clipboard history could be a security risk. I recommend using BitWarden as a browser extension to auto-fill passwords without using the clipboard.
Similarly, someone with access to your machine could look through your history.
The code is open source if you want to audit it.
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Oh I need this too
@Edent You may like to read this fedi thread:https://rage.love/@ljwrites/106543221609517078
L.J. the Daemon Worshiper (@ljwrites@rage.love)
Nice, I've just installed 👍 Start+v for equivalent now built-in to Windows 10
@Edent TIL android has built in clipboard history, and my phone doesn't have it.
Now this amuses me. I had no idea that Android had a clipboard history; I've never even figured out how to do cut-n-paste intentionally on any cell phone. (I know they support cut-n-paste, discovered by accidentally triggering it - no idea how - and at one point looked up how to use it on iOS, but soon forgot. But one thing cell phones do extremely badly is feature and UI discovery, and Android in particular went through an especially bad phase what's probably a decade or 2 ago now... 3 phones ago for me, and I replace only when they become unusable.)
The other amusing thing, of course, is that emacs has had clipboard history for as long as I remember - which probably means back to 1985, the year I first used emacs. It's certainly not a cellphone innovation. (But I'm willing to believe that clipboard history for the system-wide clipboard came with cellphones.)
Come to think of it, TECO, a character-based (not screen-based) editor that preceded emacs, had 10 named cut buffers - in 1976 IIRC. Certainly at or before 1978.
I have been using clipboard history on various Linux desktops for over a decade, and I have never known it was possible on Android.
I am pretty sure this is not a mobile phone innovation as I recall using linux clipboard managers before mobile oses had any copy and paste functionality.