Universal Clipboard now available on macOS and iOS

Jun 14, 2016 07:43 GMT  ·  By

Apple’s opening keynote at WWDC 2016 on Monday witnessed the unveiling of several new features and apps, including one that’s called Universal Clipboard and aimed specifically at Mac and iPhone users.

As you could easily guess by simply reading its name, the Universal Clipboard is just that, a universal clipboard app that works on both Macs and iPhones and provides seamless synchronization between devices. In other words, you can copy anything, be it a link, text, or photo, and paste it on the iPhone and vice-versa starting with the upcoming macOS Sierra.

While this sounds incredibly helpful, it’s not the first time we hear about such an idea. If you’re a keen observer of the technology industry, you probably recall that Microsoft unveiled a similar project back in early 2015, when an application called OneClip was spotted in the Windows Store.

Microsoft’s OneClip

At that time, OneClip was based on the same universal clipboard idea but offered a little bit more enhanced functionality as compared to Apple’s solution. Microsoft’s app was truly universal and not limited to its own platforms, so it was available on Windows, Windows 10 Mobile, Android, and iOS. This way, you could copy and paste between all your devices, no matter who built them.

“With Oneclip, it’s easy to get back to the stuff you’ve seen and used. It might be a photo you took, a screenshot you made, a phone number or address you copied on your PC (and really really need now while you’re on the run) or just an important piece of text. OneClip makes this available to you automatically, on your behalf, on all your devices. A cross device, secure, intelligent clipboard in the cloud,” Microsoft explained in the official description of the app.

In the meantime, however, Microsoft’s OneClip has been discontinued, and seeing Apple implementing such a feature in macOS is certainly worrying for those who hoped to see it in Windows.

At this point, it’s not yet very clear if Microsoft wants to make this a built-in feature of a future Windows 10 update, but if it doesn’t, macOS could suddenly become a lot more appealing to users who want a universal clipboard on their devices.