We’ve been talking about how Chromebook is slowly getting desktop functionality for a while now. This time we bring you the most wanted feature on Chromebooks: clipboard history. Hidden behind a Chrome flag, it allows you to access several copied items with a simple keyboard shortcut on Chromebook. Not just texts, you can also copy 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. So, on that note, let’s go ahead and find out how to enable clipboard history on a Chromebook.
Enable Clipboard History on a Chromebook
Before we start, let me tell you that I’m using Chrome OS 87.0.4280.24 beta and I’m sure this feature is also available on Chrome OS 86 stable channel. Other than that, the process is pretty simple and the functionality is available on school and regular Chromebooks. With that out of the way, let’s get to the steps.
1. First, open chrome://flags on Chrome and search for “clipboard”. You will find ” Productivity Experience: Enable Enhanced Clipboard“. No, go ahead and enable it.
2. Next, click on the “ To restart” button in the lower right corner.
3. After Chrome restarts, clipboard history will be enabled on your Chromebook. Now press Search + V on the keyboard to show the clipboard history under any text input field. It’s very similar to the native clipboard manager on Windows 10.
4. You can also right click on a text field and open “Clipboard” to manually open the clipboard history.
5. If you want a full-fledged clipboard manager for Chromebook with image support then you need to activate another indicator. Go ahead and enable “Enable image copying from Files app” under Chrome Flags.
6. You can now copy images and they will also appear in the clipboard history. You can go ahead and select picture and press Enter to paste the image.
7. There’s another feature that I’m sure you’ll find useful: Clipboard sharing. Open Chrome Flags and enable “Enable handling of shared clipboard function signals”.
8. Now select any text on your Chromebook and right click on it. After that choose “ To copy your android Call“. It will then instantly send the copied item to your Android smartphone. This way, you can easily share the clipboard between your Chromebook and Android smartphone.
9. That said, there are some limitations. Currently, clipboard history on Chromebook only supports clipboard data from the the last five elements copied. Other than that, once in a while, you will find a bug where the clipboard history parses the text in a weird way. That said, clipboard history works without any issues.
Copy and paste multiple items on a Chromebook
This is how you can enable the hidden clipboard manager on a Chromebook. As we can see, work is in progress and we may get a full-fledged clipboard manager with more clipboard data support in the future. Anyway, it all comes from us. If you want to learn more about these Chrome OS tips and tricks, check out our linked article. And if you want to buy a Chrome OS machine, you can find the best Chromebooks to buy in 2020 in our updated list.
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