What's New

Shy Bar Mode for the TopBar

If you want the TopBar completely out of sight when you are not using it, enable Shy Bar mode from the settings menu. The notch disappears and the bar remains hidden until you move your pointer back and forth three times along the screen edge where the TopBar is docked. The gesture works directly on the screen edge as well as slightly inside it. Requiring three completed changes of direction helps prevent accidental reveals. While Shy Bar mode is enabled, the notch style, open-on-hover, and pin-open options are unavailable because there is no visible notch to hover over, click, or keep open.

ClipBoard Manager in the the TopBar

The Clipboard view keeps a private, encrypted history of what you copy. Your copies are sorted into buckets, and buckets are grouped into collections, so you can keep things such as work, personal, and project copies apart. You can name, rearrange, merge, search, and paste from them at any time. Clipboard history is off by default. Once you turn it on, every copy you make is saved, even while the bar is collapsed or showing another view, as long as the TopBar is running.

• The Clipboard buttons. While the Clipboard view is shown, four small round buttons appear next to the Close and Settings buttons. Hover over a button to see what it does.

  • Clipboard history turns clipboard history on or off, and your choice is remembered. While it is off, the TopBar doesn't look at your clipboard at all, and a pulsing ring highlights this button so it's easy to find the first time you open the view. Turning it off doesn't delete anything you already saved; use Clear all for that.
  • Export or import saves your whole clipboard history to a zip file, or brings it back from one, for example when you reinstall Windows. See Take your history with you below.
  • Link previews shows web addresses that you copy on their own as preview cards. It is off by default. See Link cards below.
  • Clear all permanently deletes every collection, every bucket, and all saved clipboard data. Clipboard history stays on or off as it was. Nothing is deleted right away: a confirmation opens next to the button and stays open until you choose. Select Delete everything to go ahead, or close it with its X button to keep everything.

• Collections. The row at the top of the view shows your collections, two at a time. Scroll it sideways to see the rest. Each collection shows its name and a small number that tells you how many buckets it holds. The Default collection, with the history icon, is always there and can't be renamed or deleted.

  • Create a collection with the + button next to the row. Type a name of up to 16 characters and press Enter or select Create. If you leave the name empty, the collection gets a numbered name. You can create up to 10 collections in addition to Default.
  • Switch collections by clicking or tapping one. Its buckets are shown, and from then on, everything you copy is saved only in that collection. Each collection remembers its own selected bucket, and when you switch to a collection that has a bucket selected, that bucket is placed on the clipboard right away.
  • Rename or delete a collection by right-clicking it, or tapping and holding it, and selecting Rename or Delete. Rename opens the name box with the current name already typed in, so you can change it and press Enter or select Rename. Delete deletes all of the collection's buckets with it.

• Buckets. The buckets of the selected collection are shown as cards in a row that you can scroll sideways. Each card shows the bucket's name, how many clips it holds, and a preview of its 4 newest items: pictures and files are shown as thumbnails, text as a short snippet, colors as color swatches, and links as preview cards when Link previews is on. Hover over a preview to see more of its text or the name of its file. Each collection can hold up to 1,000 buckets, and only the ones that hold something are shown.

• A new bucket for every copy. While the NEW BUCKET card at the end of the row is selected, which is the default, every new copy goes into a bucket of its own in the selected collection. If that collection already has 1,000 buckets, new copies are added to its existing buckets one after another instead.

• Pick a bucket to paste from and copy into. Click or tap a bucket to select it. Its content is placed on the Windows clipboard right away, so pressing Ctrl+V in any app pastes it, and your next copies are added to that bucket instead of going into new ones. Select NEW BUCKET again to go back to one bucket per copy.

  • What you see selected is what you paste. You never have to click the selected bucket again to paste it. The selected bucket of the collection you are looking at is placed on the clipboard again by itself when you switch collections, when a search switches to another collection, when you delete the collection you are looking at, when you import, when the TopBar starts or you turn clipboard history on, and when items are moved into, moved out of, or deleted from that bucket. While NEW BUCKET is selected, the TopBar leaves your clipboard as it is.
  • Something you copy that isn't saved, such as a password, stays on the clipboard until one of those things happens. Click or tap the selected bucket to place it on the clipboard again at any time.
  • If the bucket holds files, all of its files that still exist are placed on the clipboard together, so a single paste in File Explorer copies all of them.
  • Otherwise, the newest item in the bucket is placed on the clipboard.
  • If another app is using the clipboard at that moment, the TopBar keeps trying for a few seconds. If the clipboard is still busy after that, the status line tells you, and you can click the bucket again.
  • If none of the bucket's files exist anymore and it has nothing else to paste, the clipboard is emptied, so an older copy is never pasted by mistake, and the status line tells you.

• Name your buckets. Click or tap a bucket's name and type a new one, up to 18 characters, then press Enter or click anywhere else. Clear the name to go back to the default numbered name. Buckets are numbered by their place in the row, so the numbers update when you move or delete a bucket.

• See everything in a bucket. Select Open details, or double click or tap the bucket, to open a small window that lists every item in the bucket with a thumbnail and its name or text. For a file, it also shows where the file is and how big it is. For anything else, it shows what kind of content was saved and when you copied it. Select the delete button next to an item to remove only that item.

• Delete a bucket. The Delete bucket button removes the bucket and everything in it.

• Move and merge buckets. Drag a bucket onto the left or right edge of another bucket to move it before or after that bucket, or drop it on the middle of another bucket to merge the two. A label next to the pointer tells you which one will happen before you let go. The bucket you drop on keeps its name, its items are sorted from newest to oldest, and a file that was in both buckets is kept only once.

• Move a single item to another bucket. Open the details window of a bucket, then drag an item from the window and drop it on another bucket in the bar. The item moves into that bucket and takes its place among the other items by the time it was copied. A bucket that is left empty after its last item is moved away is removed, and its details window closes.

• Split an item into a bucket of its own. If two items ended up in the same bucket by accident, drag one of them from the details window and drop it on the NEW BUCKET card. The item moves into a new bucket at the end of the row of the collection you are looking at. This isn't possible while that collection already has 1,000 buckets.

• Drag into other apps. Drag a whole bucket out of the bar, or a single item out of the details window, and drop it into another app, such as File Explorer, an email, or a chat. A bucket offers its files along with its newest text or picture, a single item offers only itself, and the app takes whatever it supports. Files are always copied, never moved from where they are.

• Search. Select the search button at the top left of the view, and a search box slides open next to it. As you type, the TopBar looks through the bucket names, the copied text and links, the titles and descriptions of link cards, and the locations of copied files in every collection. It switches to the collection that holds the first match, scrolls to that bucket, and highlights it. The line next to the search box tells you which collection and bucket matched.

  • Press Enter to jump to the next match, even when it's in another collection.
  • Press Esc, or select the search button again, to close the search box and remove the highlight.
  • The collection where a match was found becomes the selected collection, so your next copies are saved there.

• Colors. When you copy just a color code, such as #0078D4, #FFF, rgb(0, 120, 212), hsl(206 100% 42%), or hwb(206 0% 17%), the preview shows the color itself with its code written on top, instead of plain text. A color code without the leading # is recognized when it is exactly 6 characters long and mixes numbers and letters, such as 0078D4, so ordinary words and numbers are never mistaken for colors. Pasting it gives you back the code exactly as you copied it.

• Link cards. While Link previews is on, a web address that you copy on its own is shown as a preview card, the same kind of card that sites such as X (Twitter) and Facebook or chat apps show when you paste a link there. The card shows the page's preview picture, such as the banner of a GitHub repository or the thumbnail of a YouTube video, along with the page's title, and the details window also shows its short description. If the address leads straight to a picture, the picture itself is shown.

  • Only a single web address copied with nothing else gets a card. Text that contains links, or several links copied together, is saved and shown as ordinary text.
  • To make a card, the TopBar visits the address once, right after you copy it, just like a social site does when you paste a link there. It reads only the preview information that the page provides for this purpose. Website icons aren't used.
  • Only addresses on the public internet are visited. Links to your own computer or to devices on your local network, such as your router's settings page, are never visited.
  • Cards are always fetched directly and never through a proxy. On a network that only allows internet access through a proxy, links are shown as text.
  • Cards are only made for links copied while Link previews is on. Turning it off hides the cards that were already made, and turning it on again shows them again.
  • A page that can't be reached, or doesn't answer within 15 seconds, gets no card, and the link is shown as text.
  • Pasting a link that has a card still pastes the link exactly as you copied it.

• Passwords and other private content are skipped. Many apps, such as password managers, mark what you copy from them as private. The TopBar never saves such content, honoring the same signals that keep it out of Windows' own clipboard history (Windows key + V).

• It doesn't save its own pastes. What the TopBar places on the clipboard when you select a bucket isn't saved again as a new item. It's also kept out of Windows' own clipboard history and isn't synced to your other devices.

• Copying the same thing twice in a row saves it once. If what you copy is exactly the same as your previous copy, and that copy is still the newest item in its bucket, it isn't saved again. Some apps, such as Sticky Notes, report a single copy to Windows twice, and this makes sure it's saved only once.

What Is Saved for Each Kind of Copy

Text and pictures only exist on the clipboard, so the TopBar saves them in full. Files already exist on your drives, so the TopBar only remembers where they are and never makes a copy of them.

• Plain text. The text is saved in full. The bucket card shows its beginning, and pasting it later gives you back exactly what you copied.

• Formatted text. When you copy from a web page, an email, or a document in an app such as Word, the app also provides a formatted version with things like bold text, colors, links, and tables. The TopBar saves those formatted versions (HTML and Rich Text) together with the plain text, so pasting into an app that supports formatting brings the formatting back too.

• Links. A link is saved as text, which is the web address itself. If the browser or app also provided a formatted version, for example the page title as a clickable link, that is saved too. When you paste it later, apps that only accept plain text, such as Notepad, get the web address, while apps such as Word or Outlook get the formatted link, just like the original copy. When Link previews is on and you copy a single web address, the title, description, and preview picture of its card are saved with it too.

• Colors. A copied color code is saved as text, exactly as you copied it. The color swatch is made from the text whenever it's shown, so nothing extra is saved.

• Pictures copied from a web page. When you use Copy image in a browser, the browser usually places the picture itself on the clipboard, often along with a bit of web code that points to where the image came from. The TopBar saves the picture in full along with that web code, so the picture stays available even after you close the page or the image is removed from the website. The bucket card shows the picture itself.

• Screenshots and other pictures without a file. A screenshot taken with the Snipping Tool or the Print Screen key, or a picture copied in an app such as Paint, is placed on the clipboard as a picture with no file behind it. The TopBar saves the picture in full, so you can paste it later even if you never saved it as a file.

• Image files and other files. When you copy files in File Explorer, the TopBar doesn't copy the files themselves. It only saves each file's name, location (its full path, such as C:\Users\You\Pictures\photo.jpg), type, and size. The files stay where they are, and:

  • The thumbnails on the bucket card and in the details window are made by Windows from the original files whenever they're needed, so they're never stored.
  • When you paste them later, the files are taken from their original locations at that moment, so you get their latest version.
  • If a file is moved, renamed, or deleted, or its drive is disconnected, the TopBar can no longer show its thumbnail or paste it. The item stays in the bucket until you delete it, and pasting the bucket skips that file.

• Several files at once. Each file becomes its own item in the same bucket, so you can see, drag, and delete each one separately in the details window. If you copy a file that is already in the bucket, only the newest copy of it is kept.

• Files inside a zip archive. Files that you copy straight out of a zip archive opened in File Explorer, without extracting it first, don't exist as ordinary files on your drive yet, so the TopBar has no location to remember and doesn't save them. Extract the archive first, then copy the files.

• Folders. Folders aren't saved. If you copy folders together with files, only the files are saved.

• Mixed content. Some apps place several kinds of content on the clipboard at once, such as text together with a picture. The TopBar saves all of them as one item, so the app you paste into can use the kind it understands.

Where Your Clipboard History Is Stored

• One private folder. Everything the Clipboard view saves is kept in a folder in the app's private data folder on your OS drive: %LocalAppData%\Packages\VioletHansen.HardenSystemSecurity_ea7andspwdn10\LocalCache\TopBarClipboard

  • Index.dat holds the list of your collections, buckets, and items, with the text of each item.
  • Every picture, every formatted version of a copy, and every link card picture is kept in an encrypted file of its own, named with a random code. These files are only opened when a picture is shown or a copy is pasted, so even a full history of 10 collections with 1,000 buckets each opens quickly.

• See how much space it takes. While the Clipboard view is selected, the standard notch shows how much space this folder takes on your drive next to the view name, for example Clipboard 2.4 MB. It counts every file in the folder and updates on its own whenever anything is saved, changed, moved, or deleted, including when you use Clear all. The slim notch doesn't show it, to stay as small as possible.

• Only you can read it. Every file in this folder is encrypted with the data protection built into Windows and tied to your own Windows user account. Only your user account can decrypt them, so other accounts on the same computer can't read them even if they can open the files. Each time something changes, the list is encrypted and saved again, and the files of deleted items are deleted.

• Pasting never leaves an unencrypted copy. When you paste or drag a saved picture, it is decrypted in memory and handed straight to the app you paste into. No unencrypted copy is written to your drive.

• What's inside it:

  • The full text you copied, including links and color codes, and its formatted versions (HTML and Rich Text).
  • The full picture data of the pictures and screenshots you copied.
  • For files, only their name, location, type, and size.
  • The date and time you copied each item.
  • For link cards, the page's title, short description, and preview picture.
  • Your collection names, your bucket names, the order of your buckets, which bucket or NEW BUCKET card is selected in each collection, and which collection is selected.

• What's never inside it: the contents of your files, thumbnails, folders, website icons, and anything the app you copied from marked as private.

• Ready for future updates. The saved files carry a version number, so future versions of the app that save more information about each item can still read the history you already have. Updating the app won't make you lose your clipboard history.

• Not backed up, removed on uninstall. Windows doesn't include this folder in app data backups, and removes it when you uninstall the app. Use Export to keep a copy of it.

• Take your history with you. Before you reinstall Windows or move to another computer, select the Export or import button, select Export, and choose where to save the zip file. After you install the app again, turn on clipboard history, select the same button, select Import, and pick that zip file.

  • The zip file holds every collection, bucket, and item, with their names and order, the full pictures, the formatted versions of your copies, and the link card pictures.
  • The zip file is not encrypted, so anyone who gets it can read everything you copied. Keep it somewhere safe, and delete it once you have imported it.
  • Import replaces your whole current clipboard history with the history in the zip file. The imported history is encrypted for your Windows user account again, just like before.
  • Copied files are saved by their location only, so the files themselves aren't in the zip file. Put them back in the same locations if you want to paste them from your buckets.
  • Clipboard history must be on to export or import.

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