We’ve been talking about how the Chromebook is slowly getting desktop features for a while. This time we bring you the most wanted feature in Chromebooks – Clipboard History. It hides behind a Chrome flag, allowing you to access multiple copied items on a Chromebook with just a keyboard shortcut. You can copy not only texts but also multiple images and paste them wherever you want. Also, you no longer need to use paid extensions like Clipboard History Pro to access all your copied items. On that note, let’s go ahead and figure out how to enable Clipboard History on a Chromebook.
Enable Clipboard History on Chromebook
Before I start, I’m pretty sure I’m using the beta version of Chrome OS 87.0.4280.24 and this feature is also available in the Chrome OS 86 stable channel. Other than that, the process is pretty straightforward and the feature is available on both school-issued and regular Chromebooks. Other than that, let’s jump into the steps.
1. First of all, open chrome://flags
Search for “clipboard” in Chrome. You will find “Productivity Experiment: Enable Enhanced Clipboard“. No, go ahead and enable it.
2. Then, “RestartPress the ” button in the lower right corner.
3. After Chrome restarts, Clipboard History will be enabled on your Chromebook. press now Search + V On the keyboard to bring up Clipboard History under any text input field. It is very similar to the native Clipboard Manager in Windows 10.
4. You can also: right click on a text field and open “Clipboard” to manually open Clipboard History.
5. If you want a full fledged Clipboard manager for Chromebook image support then you should enable one more flag. Go ahead and enable “Enable Copying Images from the Files App” under Chrome Flags.
6. You can now copy images and they will also appear in Clipboard History. you can continue and select picture and press enter to paste the picture.
7. There is one more feature that I am sure you will find useful: Clipboard Sharing. Turn on Chrome Flags and turn on “Enable shared clipboard feature signals processing”.
8. Now, select any text on your Chromebook and right click on it. From now on, “Copy your android Phone“. It then instantly sends the copied item to your Android smartphone. This way, you can easily share the clipboard between your Chromebook and Android smartphone.
9. Having said all that, there are some limitations. Currently, Clipboard History on Chromebook only last five copied items. Other than that, every once in a while, you’ll find a bug where Clipboard History parses text strangely. However, Clipboard History works fine.
Copy and Paste Multiple Items on a Chromebook
So you can enable the hidden clipboard manager on a Chromebook. As we can see, work is in progress and in the future we may get a full-fledged clipboard manager with more clipboard data support. Anyway, that’s it for us. If you want to know more about such Chrome OS tips and tricks, check out our linked article. And if you’re interested in buying a Chrome OS machine, you can find our up-to-date list of the best Chromebooks to buy in 2020.