Nowadays, Smartphones are close to replacing laptops. People tend to do their e-mail correspondence, messaging, meetings, and even upload projects all on their smartphones.
Mobile phones using the Android OS are the most popular, user-friendly, and affordable options available in the market. These phones come with a lot of options and features. And one of the options that help Android users multi-task is the Clipboard feature.
In this article, we take a look at how to clear Clipboard-Android. This feature will help you to understand what a clipboard is, its features, and how you can delete or clear Clipboard on Android smartphones.
Before jumping into the methods that we can use to clear a Clipboard on Android, we will be looking into details such as what a clipboard is, how it works, and why you may need to clear a clipboard on Android.
What is a Clipboard?
The clipboard on Android is a basic, yet essential tool. You will not find any separate clipboard folder anywhere on your Android phone, even with the help of the most advanced File Manager apps. A clipboard is a background app that is used to copy and paste data—for instance, text, pictures, links, etc.
The clipboard option is mostly used to copy data from one app to the other. These copied texts or links are stored temporarily on Android devices’ memory.
The clipboard icon is accessible in text message apps like WhatsApp and Messenger by tapping on the three dots on the keyboard’s top right corner.
How to use the Clipboard feature?
The clipboard functionality is one of the tools for better usability while typing something, texting, or simply sharing media. For example, you can use the clipboard tool to exchange data between apps like Watts app, Instagram, Youtube, Google Hangouts, etc.
Apart from the stock Android, accessing the clipboard features and using it is quite simple. So, if you haven’t used the clipboard feature on Android, here is your tour.
Follow these steps to use the Clipboard feature on your Android device to copy and paste data, for, eg. a text message.
Step 1: For the first step, select any text messages or text with a long press and adjust the brackets. The selected text will be highlighted in blue color.
Step 2: Options appear above the highlighted text, such as copy, share, and select all. By selecting the Copy option, you are copying the text to the clipboard.
step 3: Now open the app or website where you require to paste the copied text. Just long-press on the empty text field. Some options will appear near the cursor: paste, clipboard, paste as plain text.
step 4: Here, you can tap paste and the copied texts or text messages will appear on the text box.
The same goes for any link you wish to copy and share.
Step 1: Select the desired URL, long-press the URL link and you will get the option to copy the URL. Press the Copy icon, and the URL will be copied.
Step 2: Open the app or the web browser where you wish to paste the URL link, long press again, and tap Paste from the menu bar that appears.
The link is pasted to use or share.
How to clear clipboards on Android phones?
Android smartphones are quite user-friendly and Android users can switch between different phones and use them efficiently. However, in case the selected and copied content is sensitive, such as passwords or bank account details, such information needs to be guarded and it’s best to delete any copy of such information.
The clipboard functionality allows you to quickly delete all of the selected clipboard contents or some part of it from the clipboard history with just a few clicks.
#1 – Replace the data on Android Clipboard
This is one of the easiest methods to clear the history of the clipboard. Generally, all the copied text on the clipboard disappears when it is rewritten.
It means that once you have copied something new, irrespective of whether you have used it or not, the older copied content on the clipboard will be replaced by the newly copied data.
#2 – Restart the Android device
If the first step did not work for you or you want to get rid of any data on the clipboard, this next step is equally easy.
Once you highlight all the contents required and tap copy, the copied data is stored on the phone’s RAM (random access memory). The Clipboard on android will save the data temporarily.
When the device is restarted all the content that was not saved on the hard disk refreshes or gets deleted. This way you can easily clear the clipboard on Android phones.
#3 – Make us of Clear all/ Delete icon
The following steps will help you clear or delete all the text, images, or links after being pasted.
Step 1: Open the source, such as a website or an email on your phone to select and copy the text required. Now, by long-pressing, the selected content will highlight and a menu bar with options will appear above the cursor: copy, share, select all.
Step 2: Tap the Copy option and the text will be saved on the clipboard.
Step 3: Next, head over to the messaging app or note app on your smartphone. Long press on the text field and the menu bar will appear above the cursor with options: paste, clipboard, share all.
Step 4: Tap Paste and the copied text will appear on the text field to save or share.
Step 5: Now, tap the three dots on the top right corner of the default keyboard, and a pop-up menu bar will appear with icons: theme, clipboard, text editing, etc. Tap and select the Clipboard button, and all the saved clipboard contents will appear.
Step 6: Just long-press the content to be cleared or erased and select the delete icon or clear alloptions. This way, you can delete copied items from the Android Clipboard.
#4 – Cleanup Clipboard using Third-party apps
If you frequently use the copy and paste functionality on your Android phone and store the data, here are a few third-party Clipboard Manager apps that you can download from the Google Play Store.
Such clipboard manager apps provide more clipboard option that allows you to store, edit, organize,delete, share and access clipboard information more efficiently.
Microsoft Swiftkey keyboard is another keyboard application with an integrated clipboard manager. It allows easy access to all the clipboard contents.
How to clear clipboard history on stock Android phones.
The stock version is the most basic version of Android. The manufacturer cannot update the device, Google can alone do this job. On Stock Android, the clipboard is easy to access and its features are similar to that of any other Android smartphone.
Follow the steps to see how you can clear Clipboard on Stock Android devices.
Step 1: Select the text required with a long press, the selected text will highlight and options will appear on top of the cursor; tap Copy.
step 2: Now, open the messaging app that supports contents to be pasted and long-press on the empty text field to paste the content.
Once the text has been pasted, it gets automatically erased from the Stock Android clipboard history.
Conclusion
Just like any other tool used for texting, the Clipboard on Android is easy to access on the app’s keyboard and can be used on different apps and websites. Every aspect of the Clipboard feature has been addressed in this article to solve your issues with clearing the Clipboard history on an Android device.