In Summary
- Clipboard managers let you store copied content and paste it across different apps.
- Although the default clipboard manager on Windows works well for most people, it falls short of most features. And hence, it isn’t ideal for most people.
- A third-party Windows clipboard manager, on the other hand, helps you save multiple items to your clipboard, manage/organize your clipboard history, and paste copied items quickly and efficiently, among other things.
A clipboard manager is an essential feature of any operating system that simplifies copying and pasting text between apps. Microsoft’s clipboard manager on Windows 10 did this very efficiently and allowed you to store up to 25 snippets of text to paste later.
With Windows 11, Microsoft upped the ante and included support for copying images, emoticons, and other symbols to make the clipboard more versatile.
However, despite these feature add-ons, the native clipboard manager on Windows 10 and Windows 11 still falls short of what it should be: it’s inconsistent and often fails to copy certain elements. Not to mention, managing clipboard history on the default clipboard manager is still problematic.
So if your work involves copy-pasting a lot of text between apps and you wish to have advanced features like autosave, hotkeys, plugins, cloud-syncing, etc., these are the best clipboard managers for Windows that you must check out.
Table of Contents
ClipClip
ClipClip is the most popular clipboard manager for Windows. It lets you copy multiple texts, images, and a few other kinds of files to your clipboard. Once copied, you can browse through these clippings and organize them using titles into different folders.
ClipClip employs a keyboard shortcut, which gives you a list of all your past clippings so you can easily paste them. Similarly, it also has another interesting feature, Text Translation, that lets you translate your text clippings into different languages with a single click.
In addition, ClipClip provides you the ability to look up your search history (using a dedicated keyboard shortcut), customize hotkeys to suit your workflow, upload your clips to the cloud, and password-protect your folders to keep them secure.
Besides these clipboard features, ClipClip also includes a bunch of other functionalities, such as screen capturing, text formatting, image editing, text extraction (OCR), quick web searching, and cloud synchronization with Google Drive and Dropbox, which can come in handy at times.
Free, Paid ($2.95 per month)
Download ClipClip
Ditto
Ditto isn’t a full-fledged clipboard manager. Rather, it’s an extension to the standard Windows clipboard that augments its functionality with features that eliminate the need for an advanced, dedicated clipboard manager.
With Ditto, you can save just about any type of information, be it text, images, HTML snippets, or anything else. All your clippings are saved in a database to make them easier to retrieve at a later time. And you can access all of your clippings using a simple keyboard shortcut.
Another useful Ditto feature is Special Paste, which lets you paste text in various formats like upper case, lower case, inverted case, sentence case, and many more. Plus, Ditto employs a bunch of other keyboard shortcuts to help you perform different operations on the app quickly and efficiently.
Among other features, Ditto includes the ability to share your clipboard amongst friends/peers, view stats for copied and pasted texts, group clippings, and rearrange clip order.
Free
Download Ditto
CopyQ
CopyQ is one of the more advanced Windows clipboard managers. It comes with editing and scripting features as a bonus to the basic clipboard manager’s history and management functionalities. You can use it to store text, HTML snippets, images (including screenshots), and other kinds of formats. Plus, there’s the option to add notes or tags to your copied items.
All your saved clippings are saved in customized tabs on CopyQ. That way, you can find items quickly and easily. Similarly, you can also sort, edit, and delete your saved items to have them organized and managed under their dedicated tabs.
CopyQ employs various system-wide shortcuts for different operations, and you also get the ability to add custom commands to the context menu, run custom commands automatically when the clipboard changes, assign shortcuts to your custom commands and create custom scripts to perform specific operations with your clipboard.
For instance, you can create commands to save web links in your clipboards automatically or to paste the current date and time with a keyboard shortcut; the scope of use is quite broad.
Free
Download CopyQ
ClipboardFusion
ClipboardFusion is one of the popular clipboard managers for Windows. It manages to get the balance right between being an easy-to-use app and an advanced clipboard manager with features like macros and customizable triggers.
Using ClipboardFusion, you can save various kinds of items to your clipboard history and access them later when required. All your clippings are saved and categorized accordingly to make it easier to access them. Plus, you can also opt for cloud syncing—with a Binary Fortress account—to sync your clipboard text with other devices.
As for advanced operations, Clipboard Fusion allows you to use hotkeys, create macros (using C#) to perform text transformation on your copied text snippets, and automatically set triggers to perform various clipboard actions.
For example, with macros, you can parse your clipboard text and get rid of invalid HTML tags, clear the clipboard at will, or convert text to some other format. Similarly, you can also put to use triggers to listen to events like desktop unlock or window focus to perform operations like removing formatting or whitespace from the clipboard or replacing some part of the text snippet with another piece of text.
Free, Paid (starts at $15 per machine)
Download ClipboardFusion
Clipboard Master
Clipboard Master is yet another powerful clipboard manager for Windows with an extensive set of features. It helps you copy, paste, collect, and organize your text snippets, images, files, and folders across various Windows programs. Collectively, you can store up to 10000 entries on it and access them at your fingertips whenever you want.
One of Clipboard Master’s useful features is that it allows you to copy multiple items from multiple locations simultaneously. It does this by creating a single clipboard entry for all of these items, so you can easily copy items from multiple locations and paste them onto one central location. Similarly, it also offers Flexikeys, which is another useful feature that can help you simplify carrying out repeated operations on your computer.
As for other features, Clipboard Master comes with a built-in screenshot tool to help you capture your screen, text auto-complete to complete text automatically, and a quick search and filter to look up items in your clipboard entries.
Free
Download Clipboard Master
ClipMate
ClipMate is another clipboard extension for Windows’ native clipboard manager, just like Ditto. It improves the functionality of the built-in clipboard manager so you can copy multiple text snippets on it, manage them, and use them effectively wherever required.
Using ClipMate is also quite easy, and you can use it to save all kinds of files in your clipboard and organize them into folders for quick access. It can store your text clips for as long as 31 days, and you can choose to synchronize them with other users. Plus, the tool also offers portability to allow you to run it from a USB thumb drive.
One of ClipMate’s unique features is Universal QuickPaste, which lets you paste items anywhere instantly with a double click. And it also supports the drag-and-drop functionality that makes moving copied snippets between apps much easier.
Besides, ClipMate comes with a built-in screen capture tool, so you can also use it to record your screen. It even offers advanced features like hotkey support for various operations, outbound filtering, macro pasting to substitute elements within your clipboard clipping, and Unicode and templates support, all of which help you do more with your text clippings.
30-day free trial, Paid ($34.95)
Download ClipMate
Clipdiary
Clipdiary is another powerful Windows clipboard manager. It works with all Windows programs and records every piece of information you copy to your clipboard for later access. You can use it to record all kinds of items, such as text, links, images, files, and more, and it has no limit to the number of items it can record.
One of the standout features of Clipdiary is Smart Capture, which captures data from any program automatically, so you don’t have to press the keyboard shortcut to copy it. If you plan on using this, be extra cautious when you copy personal information.
All your copied text stored in the clipboard history can be pasted with or without formatting (plain text format). Plus, you can use Clipdiary Snippets to effectively manage your entire text repository and paste your text snippets with a simple click. Besides, in case you accidentally replace a text in your clipboard, you have the option to recover it.
As for other major feature options, Clipdiary lets you customize the UI, customize mouse behavior, filter problematic apps and file formats, and set hotkeys for various app operations you need to perform.
Free, Paid (starts at $19.99)
Download Clipdiary
Do More With the Clipboard Manager Than Just Copy-Pasting Text
Using a good third-party clipboard manager allows you to store multiple text items over an extended period of time in your clipboard history. This allows you to copy-paste text between different apps quickly and efficiently and, in turn, saves you the trouble of having to retype the same text multiple times.
However, using a dedicated clipboard manager offers several other benefits in addition to just copy-pasting text. With one of the best clipboard managers for Windows on this list, for example, you can manage and organize your clippings—so that they can be used efficiently, convert/transform them into different formats, copy items from multiple sources to one central location, use custom scripts to automate clipboard operations, detect text in images, auto-complete text, and synchronize clipboard across devices or share them with others.
FAQs About Best Windows Clipboard Managers
2. What does a clipboard manager do?
A clipboard manager's primary purpose is to help you copy multiple texts, images, files, and folders and store them to your clipboard so you can access them or paste them onto different apps as required. The idea is to eliminate the hassle of having to write/copy items repeatedly, which is the main problem with the native clipboard managers on most desktops, and offer access to clipboard history at your disposal.
However, that's not all the clipboard manager can do. third-party clipboard manager apps, like the ones on this list, come with several additional functionalities like cloud clipboard syncing, hotkey support, custom command, scripting, integrated screen grab tool, and several item organization and management features, which go beyond copy-paste function.