Chrome: how to copy and paste text from your PC to your Android smartphone

A feature that Android enthusiasts can envy Apple device users, universal clipboard accessible from the cloud. This option lets you copy and paste text (an invention we owe to Larry Tesler, who died in February 2021) from any device as long as it’s linked to an Apple account. In a matter of seconds, you can copy content from macOS to paste, for example, on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

It’s very practical and we want to be able to do the same on Android. Google continues to develop its ecosystem, but it still has work to do in this area. They are also punished for not having control over the entire environment their users find themselves in, as many owners of an Android smartphone have a PC running Windows rather than Chrome OS.

Therefore, to live share your clipboard from one device to another, that moment must pass. chrome browser. Note that the functionality is not yet fully stable and is not officially available to everyone. But activating is simple.

How to copy-paste text from Chrome on PC to Android

Originally available in Chrome Canary, this feature can now be enabled in the standard version of Chrome via the “flags” system, these hidden experimental options whose enhancements are not yet complete. To take advantage of it, you must take care to comply with a few prerequisites:

• First of all, you need to make sure you are using a recent version of Chrome. Open the menu by clicking on the three vertically arranged dots in the upper right corner of the browser and enter Settings. Then go to Help > About Google Chrome to check the version installed on your device and download the latest stable update available.
• Also make sure you are logged in. same google account on smartphone (or tablet) and computer.
• So go have a look around Settings > Google and you > Google services/Sync On both devices to verify that the account information sync options are enabled.
• As explained earlier, clipboard sharing is not a fixed feature and therefore not available from Settings. You will need to make it accessible from a special menu, which you can access by entering the command in the URL bar of the browser. chrome://flags.
• In the “Search Marks” search bar type “panel”. Three flags are displayed in the “Available” tab: “Enables remote copying to retrieve messages”, “Enable processing of shared clipboard feature signals” and “Raw Board”. Enable them all by choosing “Enabled” instead of “Default”.

• Now restart Chrome.

The hard part is done, now you can enjoy the cross-platform dashboard. The drawing below:

• You can now select text with the mouse and right-click to open the context menu. You should now be presented with a new option: “Copy [Nom de votre téléphone]“. Left click on it.

• You will receive a notification on your smartphone “text shared by [Nom de votre ordinateur] / copied to clipboard“.

• Then you have the opportunity to paste the text you copied from your computer wherever you want on your mobile phone. Do as usual: long press the screen and “to stick“. Chrome acts as an intermediary, but you can paste text into any app.

And now, there it is! Before we leave, we want to say that this feature is not only available in Chrome, but also in browsers using the Chromium rendering engine. You only need to connect to your Google account with this third-party browser, otherwise the process is the same (you also need to enable flags). We have successfully run the test, for example, in Vivaldi.

Finally, we regret that at the moment it is possible to perform this manipulation in only one direction. Hopefully Google will give us the opportunity soon: copy text from your mobile to paste on your computer and will find a more efficient system in the future. Likely to happen at some point, such a feature is being tested in Chrome Canary. But even Apple is struggling to provide an excellent experience in this area. The universal clipboard option is only available if the two devices are close together and have “Handoff” options as well as Bluetooth. That’s why it seems like everyone just keeps getting their work done to provide really intuitive and fast functionality.