If you’re familiar with Windows 10 and 11’s Clipboard History feature, you must appreciate how powerful it is for lighting-fast desktop work. Objectively, though, clipboard history in Kubuntu and other KDE Plasma-based desktops is superior in several ways.
Meet KDE’s Clipboard Manager, Klipper
The KDE Plasma desktop, a well-established desktop environment in the Linux and BSD world, has a built-in clipboard history manager. In the KDE desktop, it’s just labeled “Clipboard” but in KDE development the software has the nickname “Klipper.” For the sake of clarity and avoiding wordiness, that’s what I’m going to call it from now.
A clipboard, in operating systems, refers to the software that holds whatever text or media you’ve copied. It keeps that data in memory for you to paste as you need it, and more advanced “clipboard managers” like Klipper let you see and re-copy items you copied in the past. It’ll usually give you options to otherwise use or manipulate what you copied, too.
To use Klipper, you may hit the keyboard shortcut Meta+V, and then either click on or hit Enter on the item you want, and it’ll become available for pasting from your clipboard.
To manage your clipboard, you’re able to click the clipboard icon in Plasma’s system tray. Note that I’m using Kubuntu in these screenshots, and Plasma gets customized many different ways across distros, so Klipper’s appearance may be different for you.
As an editor at How-To Geek, I’m constantly copying and pasting text and other kinds of media. I work across apps and platforms, and that often means grabbing headlines, outlines, and chunks of text and pulling them over to other text fields. That’s why a good clipboard manager is crucial for me in terms of productivity.
Windows Clipboard History Is Missing These Klipper Features
While they look fairly similar at first glance, Klipper has several features and abilities you won’t find inWindows' clipboard history tool.
Expanded History Limit
In the Windows clipboard history, you have a hard limit of 25 items. Klipper can be configured to keep up to 2,048 items. Of course, the more items you’re keeping in your clipboard history the more memory getting consumed. So you should only expand it as far as you really think you need it.
History Search
Another feature missing from Windows' implementation is a search function. Whenever you open the clipboard history, just start typing and Klipper will filter for only items that match your search term. This feature saves me from eyeballing my history when I want to quickly pull up something I copied a while ago.
Automated Clipboard Actions
Klipper also has built-in support for automated actions when specific text gets copied into the clipboard. For example, if you’re often copying files to one specific directory, you could set up an action to automatically paste the contents of the clipboard into that directory whenever Klipper detects a file has been copied.
This feature is for advanced users, though, and requires you tobe comfortable with regular expressions.
Select-to-Copy
Klipper has an added ability you can enable that you might call “fast copying mode” where everything you highlight with your cursor, images included, automatically becomes available in your clipboard. When it’s enabled, I never have to hit Ctrl+C or right-click and copy anything. All I have to do is highlight it with my mouse, and then I can paste it anywhere.
As someone who’s picked up a habit of highlighting text as he reads it, this potentially meansa lotof content filling up the clipboard. Fortunately, Klipper by default will only include what you highlighted in your clipboard history if you explicitly use a copy command. If you want to go freak mode with it, though, you can disable that limitation, creating an entry for every single thing you highlight with your cursor.
File and Folder Storage
Unlike the Windows clipboard manager, Klipper can keep files and folders in your clipboard history. That image you copied earlier but forgot to paste because you got distracted? Don’t bother going back to find its directory again, just pull it up again in the clipboard history.
QR Codes for Every Item
Every item you put in your clipboard history Klipper will (attempt to) generate a QR code for. Need a QR code for a Wi-Fi password or for a website URL? Just find the item in your clipboard and click the QR code button next to it, and you’ll see one.
You’ll need to screenshot it if you want it saved. This can also be a quick way to give someone a link or some text through their phone. You just copy it with Klipper and let them scan the code on your screen.
Clipboard Text Editing
The KDE clipboard manager has what’s essentially a built-in text editor. It lets you edit any text item in your clipboard history. Just click the pencil icon next to an item, make the text changes you need, and then click the Save button.
That entry in your history will be changed to your modified version, and it’ll also move to the top of your clipboard for pasting.
Clipboard Shortcuts Make It Even Easier to Use
There are a couple of shortcuts enabled by default, like Meta+V, which is essentially the same as the Windows+V shortcut to open the Windows clipboard history.
However, if you open up Klipper’s configuration menu, you can customize that shortcut or enable others. For example, I enabled the clipboard history deletion shortcut and assigned the combination Shift+Meta+X.
Now whenever I hit that combination, my entire history gets wiped, so no one can see what I’ve been copying lately.
For what it’s worth, you can alsomake a keyboard shortcut to clear the clipboard in Windows. The process isn’t as intuitive as KDE makes it, though.
There’s One Windows Feature Klipper Is Missing, Though
Putting my praise and accolades aside, there is one feature lacking from KDE clipboard manager that’s present in Windows' Clipboard History: pinning.Windows lets you pin items to your historyfor easy frequent access, which persist across boots and even clipboard clearing.
Klipper on KDE lets you make the clipboard persist across boots, but you can’t make something resistant to clearing. This would be a nice feature for when I have content I’m often repeatedly copy-pasting.
Extend Your Clipboard With Another KDE App
So far I’ve only covered what you’re able to do with your clipboard inside the Plasma desktop environment. KDE has another app called KDE Connect that, among many other things, lets youshare your clipboard with your iPhoneor Android device. It’s not even limited to Linux computers, though; KDE Connect is available on Windows and macOS too.
