How to Retrieve Clipboard History in Windows

Ever copied a code snippet or text from the web and forgot to paste it before you copied something else? Well, all of us will have an experience of something like this, where we want to desperately retrieve those information that was once copied to the clipboard. But since Windows clipboard will only remember the last item that was copied onto it, it would seem impossible to recover the information that was copied earlier. However, this problem can be solved using an alternative clipboard manager in place of the default one.

In this post you will find a few such alternative clipboard managers for Windows using which it would be possible to save and retrieve every piece of information that was copied to the clipboard. Here’s a quick list:

1. Clipdiary

This tool is a powerful clipboard manager which will store every piece of information that was copied to the clipboard including text, images or any other file. Clipdiary automatically loads upon Windows startup and maintains a database to store the history of all copied items.

This makes it possible to retrieve the information that was once copied to the clipboard, be it the last hour or the last week. Clipdiary is a shareware tool which comes with a 30 day fully functional evaluation period.

Download Clipdiary

2. ClipMagic

ClipMagic is similar to Clipdiary but includes a few extra features that could seem handy for advanced users. The following are some of the extra features of ClipMagic that are not present in Clipdiary:

• Categorize/organize your clips. You can also create filters/rules for your incoming clips
• You can store/categorize your ideas to research fast
• Assign often used text like email signatures to hotkeys

Download ClipMagic

3. Ditto

Ditto is a powerful alternative to the default Windows clipboard manager which is an open source tool. It keeps track of all the copied items such as text, images and other files so that you can retrieve them whenever necessary. The following are some of the highlights of Ditto:

• Assign hotkeys to frequently used clippings
• Search and organize the clippings based on task or project
• Supports unicode so that you can copy foreign and non-standard characters without any issues
• Get a preview of all the copied items including thumbnails of images just by pressing the assigned hotkey
• Ditto comes as a freeware so that you can enjoy all of it’s features free of cost

Even though Ditto is a freeware, it is still comparable to the two shareware tools discussed earlier. So in my opinion Ditto is always the first choice. You may still download and try all the three and keep the one that you like!

Download Ditto

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