Copy and paste is the most repeated thing you do on a computer, and the people who do it fastest never touch the mouse for it. The whole system rests on two keys, plus a few useful neighbours. Once your fingers know them, you stop thinking about the mechanics and just move text where it needs to go. Here is the complete set, with the Windows version and the Mac version side by side, plus the cases where the obvious shortcut does something else entirely.
The two you actually need
Almost everything comes down to copy and paste, and they are a matched pair. Copy takes whatever you have selected and puts it on the clipboard, the invisible holding slot your system uses to carry one item from one place to another. Paste drops that item wherever your cursor is.
- Copy: Ctrl+C on Windows, Chromebook and Linux. Cmd+C on a Mac.
- Paste: Ctrl+V on Windows, Chromebook and Linux. Cmd+V on a Mac.
The pattern is the same everywhere. Select first, copy, move your cursor to the destination, paste. The C is easy to remember because it stands for copy. The V sits right next to it on the keyboard, so the two are a quick roll of the fingers, and the V is sometimes explained as a downward arrow pointing to where the text lands. Either way, your left hand can do the whole job while your right hand stays on the mouse or the trackpad.
Cut, select all, and undo
Three more shortcuts turn copy and paste from a single trick into a proper toolkit. They share the same key column, so they are easy to learn together.
- Cut: Ctrl+X (Windows) or Cmd+X (Mac). Like copy, but it removes the original. Use it to move text rather than duplicate it.
- Select all: Ctrl+A (Windows) or Cmd+A (Mac). Grabs every item in the current document, page or folder so you can copy the lot in one go.
- Undo: Ctrl+Z (Windows) or Cmd+Z (Mac). Not strictly a clipboard shortcut, but the one you reach for the instant a paste lands in the wrong place.
A common pattern strings several of these together. Press Ctrl+A to select everything, Ctrl+C to copy it, click into a new document, and Ctrl+V to drop it in. That is an entire page moved in four keystrokes. If you wanted to move it rather than duplicate it, swap the copy for Ctrl+X.
Paste without formatting
When you copy text from a web page or a styled document, you usually copy the look of it too: the font, the colour, the size, the links. Paste that into an email or a clean document and it arrives looking nothing like the rest. The fix is a plain-text paste, which keeps the words and throws away the styling.
- Windows and Chromebook: Ctrl+Shift+V in most apps and browsers.
- Mac: Cmd+Shift+V is the common one, though some apps use Cmd+Option+Shift+V. When in doubt, the Edit menu lists it as Paste and Match Style.
This is one of those shortcuts that feels minor until you use it once, and then you use it constantly. We wrote a full guide on the quirks, because the shortcut differs more between apps than any other on this page: how to paste without formatting.
Clipboard history on Windows
Standard copy and paste only remembers the last thing you copied. Windows has a built-in upgrade. Press Win+V to open Clipboard History, a small panel showing the recent items you have copied so you can paste an earlier one without re-copying it. The first time you press it, Windows asks you to turn the feature on. After that, Win+V becomes a genuinely useful third shortcut alongside Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.
The Mac has no equivalent built in. Cmd+C and Cmd+V only ever hold the most recent item, which is why a lot of Mac users end up adding a clipboard manager to get a history at all. It is also where the limits of the built-in tools start to show: Windows history clears when you restart, and neither system searches what you copied weeks ago.
The shortcuts that change in the terminal
One place plays by different rules. In a command-line terminal on Windows or Linux, Ctrl+C does not copy. It is a decades-old command that interrupts and cancels whatever is currently running, so it has to keep that meaning. To copy and paste in a terminal you use the shifted versions instead:
- Copy in a terminal: Ctrl+Shift+C on Windows and Linux.
- Paste in a terminal: Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows and Linux.
On a Mac terminal, the usual Cmd+C and Cmd+V work fine, because Cmd is separate from the Ctrl key the terminal reserves for its commands. If you live in a terminal, our guide to copy and paste in the terminal goes deeper, including right-click paste and the differences between shells.
When the keyboard is not an option
Phones and tablets have no Ctrl key, so the gesture replaces the shortcut. On both iPhone and Android, tap and hold a word to start a selection, drag the handles to cover what you want, then tap Copy. To paste, tap and hold where you want the text and choose Paste. The clipboard itself works the same way underneath, so anything you copy on a phone behaves like a Ctrl+C on a desktop. Our pillar guide to how to copy and paste on any device maps the whole territory, and copy and paste on a Mac covers the Cmd side in detail. iPhones add a neat extra: a three-finger pinch on the screen copies, and a three-finger spread pastes.