There are various useful keyboard shortcuts which can make your computer life easier but Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are perhaps the most helpful for copying and pasting through the clipboard. But you may find that the built-in functionality of Windows 10 lacks a little – how about the ability to store several things on the clipboard? How about the clipboard synchronization between devices? The desire to keep things forever on the clipboard?

So these are just solutions that Windows 10 already provides! For some reason, Microsoft decided not only to deactivate it by default but also not to advertise its presence. Here’s how to make the history of the clipboard and how to use it.

A reader recently wrote about the coming changes to the Windows 10 clipboard, which I completely forgotten existed, indicated the history feature. Looking back at my files, I find out more than a year and a half ago that I wrote about the magazine story – and then somehow deleted it from my memory. It may well be that you have forgotten or had no idea; use the guide below to get it up and running.

The only precondition is that at least Windows 10 October 2018 update is activated — I hope you do!

1. Open Start menu settings and select system
2. Click the left side of the clipboard
3. Enable the Clipboard History toggle
4. If you want to have access to clipboard contents between devices, you can also turn Sync across devices (and see the note at the end of the article).

And there’s more about it. You can use the same way to copy text, images and other items into the clipboard — simply press Ctrl + C(or Ctrl + X instead of copy). The difference once the clipboard history is activated is that the first element you have copied will not be replaced when you press Ctrl + C a second time. When you click the Ctrl + V, the last thing you copied is pasted, however, you can access the background of the clipboard by pressing Win + V.

The floating panel shows a list of all things you have copied and you can simply click on any of them. Additional options are available when you press the … Next to the entry button. You can delete individual items from the submenu, clear the clipboard completely or add any item you want to paste over and over again. This last choice is useful for reuse code fragments, and you usually type loads of other text bits, such as your address. Pinned objects stay on the clipboard even though the majority of the contents are removed.

One last choice worth noting is the synchronization of the clipboard. When you activate this environment, you can either sync something (automatically sync the text I copy) or only the things you want (Never automatically sync the text I copy). You can select individual objects to synchronize with this above choice by clicking on the … Next to entry next to the Sync option.