Auto-clear clipboard after paste

Brainstorm
, ,
1

I have history set to 1 entry, I would still really like there to be an option in the Configure Clipboard settings to auto-clear the copied text after a set amount of time. The Bitwarden app does this quite well with a drop-down menu and gives you the option to choose the timeout before it’s cleared. This doesn’t seem to be possible when using it through the web browser so it would be nice to not have to copy some random text after pasting a password everytime. In addition, there could be an option/checkbox to clear the clipboard immediately after pasting.

2

I use CopyQ clipboard, the window appears on Ctrl_V and I click to select the item to be pasted.

I can also press Ctrl_V to press DEL to remove any entries. I would suggest this is a better option than setting a single entry - because you can have multiple history items, and clear them easily with DEL.

I’m not sure why you need to clean your clipboard so quickly, rather than wait until the end of your session…

It’s certainly not something I would suggest needs to be built in, as I’m sure very few users are interested - however, a bit of Bash should also work well here:

#!/bin/bash

last_content=""
counter=0

while true; do
  sleep 0.5
  current_content=$(qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper org.kde.klipper.klipper.getClipboardContents)

  if [ "$current_content" != "$last_content" ]; then
    counter=0
    last_content="$current_content"
  else
    counter=$((counter + 1))
    if [ $counter -ge 120 ]; then  # 120 x 0.5s = 60s
      qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper org.kde.klipper.klipper.clearClipboardHistory
      notify-send -i dialog-information "Clipboard Cleared" "Klipper clipboard history has been purged."
      counter=0
      last_content=""
    fi
  fi
done

I just tested it, and it works well enough - you could set up a cron job, or you could just throw this in your autostart. Not a big problem if you want to remove the notification, or adjust the timing (I put the notification so that you’ll get some peace of mind and can check klipper to see that it’s cleared).

3

My guess would be p*rn?

1 Like
4

I keep my “selection” buffer and the clipboard separate, mainly because I make heavy use of the saved items in Klipper. This keeps highlighted text out of it, but still usable via the middle-button paste instead of ctrl-v (or meta-v for the full saved list).

So if I forget a password, I just highlight it and then mmb. No copy, no paste. It is never in Klipper.

Now, that selection buffer is still there, somewhere, until different text is selected. But it isn’t in Klipper.

1 Like
5

Even further - using CopyQ I have tabs - which are even more awesome… so I have one tab for reponses in Thai (which I cannot type for the life of me), another for forum stuff - like:

:light_bulb: Legibility Tip

Summary

When posting terminal output, copy the output and paste it here, wrapped in three (3) backticks, before AND after the pasted text. Like this:

```
pasted text
```

Or three (3) tilde signs, like this:

~~~
pasted text
~~~

Alternatively, select all pasted text, and click the </> button on the taskbar - which will indent the whole pasted section with one TAB, causing it to render the same way as described above.

My guess is that a LOT of users don’t really understand clipboard too much… anyone who ran through a Helix (likely the same if you completed an NVim tutorial) would have more ideas about registers and levels of clipboard activity…

In this case, however, it’s possible that OP hit and run - maybe they obliterated all history of the transaction from memory.