Here’s why Windows 11’s Clipboard History sometimes misses copied items

There’s been an aggravating bug in Windows 11’s Clipboard History that sometimes causes it to miss what you’ve copied to it. Microsoft has given an explanation for it (spotted by Windows Latest), citing Clipboard History’s asynchronous design.

In short, Clipboard History gets updated in the background after Windows receives a signal that something has been copied. If you’re so quick that you copy something else before Clipboard History has time to register the first copy signal, it will get skipped.

In other words, the issue with Clipboard History sometimes missing items you’ve copied mainly occurs when you copy several items in quick succession, or large amounts of data in apps like Excel.

On top of that, some apps—like Word and Excel—also use delayed rendering. This means they don’t immediately put the finished data into the clipboard, but instead promise to provide it when Windows asks for it. If the app is busy or slow, the process may take too long. After 30 seconds, Windows will drop everything and the clipboard will be empty.

Even so, Clipboard History is great and one of the most useful Windows keyboard shortcuts worth knowing. You can always view your own Clipboard History with the Windows key + V shortcut.