Automatically clear your clipboard with ClipTTL

You’re working away in one app, but realize you need data from another. So what? That’s what the clipboard is for: copy here, paste there and it’s sorted in seconds.

But the story isn’t over. The information you copied will remain in the clipboard until it’s replaced, visible to others, consuming RAM (maybe a lot, if it’s an HD image), and annoyingly appearing in other documents if you accidentally hit "paste".

You could try to fix this by replacing confidential clipboard items with something else. Once you’ve copied and pasted a password, for instance, copy some other text and your login will disappear.

This manual approach is a hassle, though. It’ll slow you down, and there’s a chance you’ll forget.

Another option is to create a shortcut which automates the process. It only takes a few seconds: right-click your desktop, select New > Shortcut and enter this in the Location box.

cmd.exe /c echo off | clip

Pin the shortcut to your taskbar, launch it as required and it’ll wipe the current clipboard contents.

If that’s still too much work, you could try ClipTTL, a tiny program which automatically clears the clipboard after a fixed number of seconds (20, by default).

The program is an ultra-compact 58KB, so it’s no surprise that the GUI is basic. Run it, ClipTTL adds a single icon to your system tray and immediately goes to work. And if you’re tired of your clipboard data disappearing 20 seconds after copying, left or right-click the icon and it closes down.

If the default timeout isn’t right for you, pass it another figure (in seconds) on the command line, like: clipttl.exe 60

This won’t protect you from any serious attacker. Malware or other logging software can hook your clipboard and save everything you copy, as you copy it. But it could still be useful to clear the clipboard yourself, if only occasionally, and ClipTTL makes this process quick and easy.

ClipTTL runs on Windows 7 and later.