Once you enable the clipboard history feature on Windows, anything you copy appears in your clipboard. Windows may also sync your clipboard items across devices if you’ve enabled the sync feature.
Fortunately, you can clear your clipboard history at any time. In fact, there are several ways to do it. Here we show you four easy ways to clear clipboard history in Windows 11.
1. How to Clear the Clipboard History From the Clipboard Tab
Let’s start with the quickest method. The clipboard tab on Windows provides an easy way to clear clipboard history. Simply press Win + V to summon the clipboard tab and then click the Clear all button to remove all copied items from your clipboard.
You can also delete individual entries from the clipboard if you want. To do so, click the three-dot menu icon next to the entry you want to remove, and then click on the trash icon.
2. How to Clear the Clipboard History via the Settings App
Another option for clearing the clipboard history in Windows 11 is to use the Settings app. Here’s how you can go about it.
You can also disable or enable the clipboard history feature from this menu if you want.
3. How to Clear the Clipboard History With Command Prompt
Command Prompt is a useful tool if you prefer to communicate with your computer via text commands. Clearing clipboard data via Command Prompt only requires you to run a single command.
To clear clipboard history using Command Prompt:
echo.|clip
And that’s about it. The clipboard history will be cleared once you run the above command. For more useful commands like this, see this list of essential CMD commands you should know.
4. How to Create a Desktop Shortcut to Clear Clipboard History
Although the above methods for clearing clipboard history are easy, repeating this process time and again can be tiresome. If you want a super fast way to clear clipboard history on Windows 11, you can create a desktop shortcut for it. Here are the steps you need to follow.
cmd /c echo.|clip
You can now clear clipboard history on Windows 11 by double-clicking the desktop shortcut at any time. You can also change the desktop shortcut icon if you want. For that, refer to our guide on how to customize icons on Windows and follow the steps outlined there.
Optionally, you can also invoke the newly created shortcut with a keyboard shortcut. Here’s how to do it.
Once you complete the above steps, you can use the specified keyboard shortcut to quickly clear the clipboard history in Windows 11.
Clearing the Clipboard History in Windows 11
Although Windows automatically clears your clipboard data when you shut down or restart your computer, there may be times when you want to manually clear your clipboard history. Thankfully, purging clipboard data in Windows 11 is fairly simple, and you can use any of the methods listed above.