[How To] Clear Clipboard History In Windows 10

If your clipboard history data is sensitive & clipboard sync may leak the data, here's how to clear clipboard history in Windows 10.

Kapil Arya
11x Microsoft MVP · Admin
2 min read
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In our previous guide, we have shown you how to enable or disable clipboard history in Windows 10. Now in this article, we’re going to share how to clear the clipboard history when you have it enabled. FYI, clipboard history feature is only available on Windows 10 build 17666 or later. To check the build you’re on, run winver command.

If your clipboard history data contains some sensitive information, which can be misused, you must clear this data regularly. Because due to cloud synchronization, the clipboard history data may be accessible from another device using same Microsoft account but by different person. Also the clipboard data should get cleared, otherwise older data may keep appearing while you paste it somewhere.

At the moment, Microsoft has limited clipboard history data to less than 1MB. The data may be plain text, HTML code or image of most usable formats.

Here’s how you can clear clipboard history data:

How To Clear Clipboard History In Windows 10

PART 1 – Clear Clipboard & Its History Data

1. Right click Start Button or press W8K + X keys and select Settings.

2. In the Settings app, navigate to System > Clipboard.

How To Clear Clipboard History In Windows 10

3. Under Clipboard, look for Clear clipboard data heading. Click on Clear button under this should clear your clipboard history.

How To Clear Clipboard History In Windows 10

Note that this clears clipboard history data excluding pinned items. To erase pinned items as well, you need to turn off or disable the clipboard history completely.

Close Settings app and return to Desktop, if you like.

PART 2 – Clear Clipboard Without Affecting Its History Data

In case if you just want to clear out what’s in the clipboard (the last item you copied), you can try below mentioned steps. This works in all Windows OSes.

1. Right click Start Button or press W8K + X keys and select Run.

How To Clear Clipboard History In Windows 10

2. In Run, type/paste cmd /c echo.|clip and press Enter key or click OK. A Command Prompt window should flashed for few seconds and this should clear the clipboard.

How To Clear Clipboard History In Windows 10

So this is how you can clear clipboard and its history data in Windows 10.

That’s it!

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Article by

Kapil Arya
11x Microsoft MVP · Admin

Kapil holds Microsoft MVP title in Windows IT Pro expertise, 11-times in a row (2014-2025). He is 8-times Windows Insider MVP as well, and author of 'Windows Group Policy Troubleshooting' book. In 2015, Microsoft India accomplished him as 'Windows 10 Champion'. Being passionate Windows blogger, he loves to help others on fixing their system issues. Kapil has worked with official Microsoft Community Engagement Team (CET) on several community projects. You can subscribe him for news/updates and fixes for Windows.

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