To make sure no important information is accessible via the clipboard, you can create a custom clear clipboard shortcut. Here’s how.
In Windows, you can copy almost any type of data to the clipboard via Control + C keyboard shortcut. Once copied, you can paste it anywhere you want with Control + V keyboard shortcut. You can think of clipboard as a temporary storage place where Windows stores the copied items. Generally, the default Windows clipboard is designed to hold only one copy instance. So, as soon as you copy another data, the last copied data will be automatically discarded to make room for the new one. However, if you don’t copy anything, the data will stay in the clipboard as long as it replaced by another piece of data.
For the most part, this is not an issue. But there might be times when you’ve copied something sensitive in nature, like a password, social security number, documents, photos, etc. In those cases, it is important that you remove that information from the clipboard as soon as you are done. This is especially important if the computer you are using is not yours. To help you with that, let me show you a simple way to create a Clear Clipboard shortcut in Windows. Using this shortcut, you can clear the clipboard with just a single double-click. There is no need to find some other data to copy just to clear the previous clipboard entry.
Jump to:
- Create shortcut
- Download shortcut (alternative)
Note: If you’ve enabled Windows 10’s new Universal Clipboard feature, then you have to clear clipboard history from the Settings app.
Step-By-Step Guide to Create Clear Clipboard Shortcut
To create a clear clipboard shortcut, we can use the regular new shortcut wizard available from the desktop. Just follow the steps as is and you will be done in no time.
Note: If you don’t want to manually create the shortcut, follow the second section to download a pre-configured shortcut.
1. First, right-click on the desktop and select “New → Shortcut” from the context menu.
2. As soon as you do that, the shortcut wizard will open. In the blank field, copy the below command, paste it in, and click on the “Next” button.
%windir%\System32\cmd.exe /c "echo off | clip"
3. On this screen, name the shortcut anything you want. In my case, I’m setting the name to “Clear Clipboard”. Click on the “Finish” button.
That is it. You’ve successfully created the shortcut. From now on, whenever you want to clear the clipboard, simply double-click on the shortcut.
Download Shortcut
If you don’t want to manually create the shortcut, click here to download it. Since this is a simple shortcut, all I did was share the shortcut I just created. If you want to, you can right-click on the downloaded shortcut and select the “Properties” option to see the same command we used in the top section in the “Target” field.
That is it. I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.
