Per-OS clipboard behavior at a glance
The columns below cover the six environments where this question comes up most. “Win+V history” refers to the Windows Clipboard History feature (introduced in Windows 10 version 1809), which is separate from the ordinary single-item clipboard.
| Windows | Win+V history | macOS | iPhone | Android | Linux (X11) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| After you copy the next item | Replaced | Added to list | Replaced | Replaced | Replaced | Replaced |
| After the source app closes | Kept | Kept | Kept | Kept | Kept | Cleared |
| After a restart | Cleared | Cleared (unless synced) | Cleared | Cleared | Cleared | Cleared |
| History depth | 1 item | ~25 items | 1 item | 1 item | Keyboard only | 1 item |
| Auto-clear timer | None | None | None | ~2 min (Universal Clipboard cross-device) | ~1 hr unpinned (Gboard) | None |
A few things worth noting about that table. The “Cleared (unless synced)” entry for Win+V on restart means that if you sign into a Microsoft account and enable cloud sync, the history survives a restart, but it still caps at around 25 items and the content is readable by Microsoft’s servers. The Android figure is Gboard-specific; Samsung Keyboard and other keyboards have their own timers. The iPhone Universal Clipboard window is an approximate figure based on Apple’s documentation (2024); Apple describes it as a “brief period” and the practical limit is generally accepted to be around two minutes.
How each platform handles the clipboard
Windows: volatile memory, one item by default
The standard Windows clipboard lives in memory. It holds exactly one item, and that item survives until you copy something new or shut the machine down. There is no built-in timer. So if you copy a URL, walk away, come back an hour later and paste, it is still there, provided you never copied anything else in between and the machine stayed on.
The catch is the restart. Shut down or restart, and the clipboard is wiped. This trips people up constantly because it is easy to forget that the machine has been off between the copy and the paste.
Windows Clipboard History (Win+V): a buffer, not a memory
Pressing Win+V opens the Clipboard History panel, a feature Microsoft introduced in Windows 10 1809 (2018). It keeps a list of your recent copies rather than just the last one, and that list holds roughly 25 items before the oldest entries start dropping off.
Clipboard History clears on restart by default. If you sign into a Microsoft account and turn on cloud sync inside the Clipboard History settings, the list can survive restarts and show up on your other Windows devices. That sync goes through Microsoft’s servers, which can read the content. Even with sync on, the history still caps at around 25 items. It is a handy short-term buffer, not a permanent record.
macOS: single item, cleared on restart, no history
macOS keeps exactly one item on the clipboard at a time. Like Windows, it survives until you copy something new or restart. Unlike Windows, there is no built-in clipboard history at all. Apple does not offer an equivalent of Win+V.
Universal Clipboard, which is part of Apple’s Handoff feature (Apple Support, 2024), lets you copy on one Apple device and paste on another. But that cross-device availability lasts only a brief window, generally around two minutes in practice, after which the copied content is no longer available on the other device. It is designed for quick handoffs, not for retrieving something you copied an hour ago.
iPhone and iPad: one item, one device at a time
iOS and iPadOS hold a single clipboard item in memory. It stays until you copy something else or restart the device. Universal Clipboard (described above) can surface that item on your Mac or other Apple devices briefly, but the standard clipboard on the iPhone itself has no timer and no history.
One nuance: starting in iOS 16, apps must ask permission before reading the clipboard, and iOS shows a banner when an app reads it. This is a privacy safeguard, not a timer, and it does not affect how long the content stays on the clipboard.
Android: keyboard-level clipboard, timer on Gboard
Android’s clipboard architecture is different from desktop OSes. The system clipboard holds one item. Many keyboards, including Gboard (Google Support) and Samsung Keyboard, also maintain their own clipboard tray that holds several recent items and lets you pin the ones you want to keep.
Gboard explicitly warns in its clipboard tray that unpinned items will be deleted after one hour. Pinned items remain until you remove them manually. Samsung Keyboard has a similar clipboard panel with its own retention policy. These are keyboard-specific features, not OS-level clipboard history, which means switching keyboards means losing that history.
Starting in Android 10, background apps are blocked from reading the clipboard without user interaction. This also means third-party clipboard managers on Android cannot capture copies in the background the same way a desktop app can. Relic on Android is a browse-and-search lens for your synced history, not a background recorder.
Linux (X11): data lives in the source application
Linux under X11 has a distinctive and often surprising clipboard model. The application you copied from does not push data into a central store. Instead it holds the data itself and answers requests from whatever you paste into. This means that when the source application closes, the data is gone, because there is nothing left to serve it.
This is documented behavior of the X11 selection protocol, not a bug. It is why copying something and then closing the terminal, browser tab, or editor you copied from can leave you with nothing to paste. Tools like xclip and xsel work around this by reading the data out of the source and holding it themselves, but they only help if you explicitly run them. A clipboard manager like CopyQ or GPaste solves this by keeping a persistent copy on disk.
Wayland-based desktops (GNOME on recent Fedora and Ubuntu, for example) handle this differently at the compositor level, and most modern Wayland compositors preserve clipboard content after the source closes. But behavior varies by compositor, so it is worth verifying on your specific setup.
How a clipboard manager changes this
A clipboard manager solves the fragility problem by writing your clipboard history to disk instead of relying on memory. Because it is on disk, a restart does not clear it. Because it keeps a list instead of one item, copying something new does not erase what came before. And because it is searchable, you can find something you copied last week without scrolling through hundreds of entries.
The clipboard is full of sensitive content: passwords, codes, account numbers, private messages. Most clipboard managers store this history in plain text on disk, which is fine until the machine is lost or compromised.
Relic captures everything you copy automatically and keeps it encrypted on your device using XChaCha20-Poly1305 with Argon2id key derivation. Nothing is stored or synced in a form anyone else can read, including us. The history syncs across your devices, so the thing you copied on your laptop shows up on your phone and vice versa.
- Free tier: keeps a rolling 500 items. Text is always unlimited.
- Pro tier: keeps everything forever, no cap.
- Windows desktop client is live today. Mac and Linux are rolling out. Mobile is a browse-and-search lens (phone operating systems block background clipboard capture).
Frequently asked questions
Does copied text disappear when I restart my computer?
Yes, on every major OS. The clipboard is held in memory, so a restart wipes it. Windows Clipboard History (Win+V) can survive restarts if you sign in and enable cloud sync, but it still caps history at around 25 items. A clipboard manager keeps your history on disk across restarts.
Why did my copied text disappear on Linux?
Linux X11 clipboard data lives inside the source application. When that app closes, the data is gone. This is a known quirk of the X11 selection model, not a bug. Wayland-based desktops behave similarly unless a clipboard manager or compositor holds a copy after the source closes.
How long does the iPhone clipboard last?
Until you copy something else or restart the device. iOS keeps exactly one item in the main clipboard. The Universal Clipboard feature that hands off content to your other Apple devices has a roughly two-minute window, documented by Apple, after which the cross-device availability expires.
Does Gboard really clear the clipboard after an hour?
Yes. Gboard warns users in the clipboard tray that unpinned items will be deleted after one hour. Pinned items stay until you remove them. This is Gboard-specific behavior; other Android keyboards have their own policies and some clear items even faster.
What is the best way to make sure I never lose something I copied?
Use a clipboard manager that saves to disk rather than relying on memory. Relic captures everything you copy, stores it encrypted on your device, and keeps it across restarts indefinitely (Pro keeps forever; the free tier keeps a rolling 500 items; text is always unlimited).