How to Copy and Paste on a Chromebook: Shortcuts, Touchpad and Clipboard History

A Chromebook looks simple until you go to right-click and there's no right button. Or you paste a quote into a Google Doc and it shows up in someone else's font. Learning how to copy and paste on a Chromebook properly takes a few minutes, and ChromeOS hides a couple of genuinely useful tricks that most people never find.

Here's all of it: the keyboard shortcuts, the touchpad and touchscreen methods, plain-text pasting, moving files, and the built-in clipboard history.

The Keyboard Shortcuts

If you've used Windows, you already know these. ChromeOS uses the Ctrl key:

• Ctrl + C copies the selection
• Ctrl + X cuts it (copies and removes it)
• Ctrl + V pastes

Select text, press Ctrl + C, click where it should go, press Ctrl + V. A few companions are worth learning at the same time:

• Ctrl + A selects everything in the page or field
• Ctrl + Z undoes a paste that landed in the wrong spot
• Ctrl + Shift + Z redoes it

Forgot a shortcut? Press Ctrl + Alt + / to open ChromeOS's built-in shortcut viewer and search for it.

How to Right-Click and Copy With the Touchpad

Chromebook touchpads don't have a separate right button, but right-clicking is easy once you know the gesture:

• Tap or click with two fingers on the touchpad, or
• Hold Alt and click with one finger.

Either one opens the context menu with Copy, Cut and Paste. To select text in the first place, click and hold, then drag across the words. Double-clicking selects a single word and triple-clicking selects a whole paragraph in most apps.

If two-finger clicks don't open the menu, check Settings → Device → Touchpad and make sure tap-to-click is turned on.

Copy and Paste on a Touchscreen

On a touchscreen Chromebook or in tablet mode:

1. Long-press a word to select it.
2. Drag the blue handles to extend the selection.
3. Tap Copy in the menu that appears.
4. Long-press where you want the text, then tap Paste.

It's slower than the keyboard, but handy when the device is folded back or you're reading with the keyboard out of reach.

Paste Without the Formatting

Copy a paragraph from a website, paste it into Gmail or Google Docs, and it often arrives with the site's font, size and colors. Most of the time you only want the words.

Press Ctrl + Shift + V to paste as plain text. The formatting is dropped and the text takes on the style of wherever you're pasting it. In Google Docs, the same command also sits in the right-click menu as Paste without formatting.

If you find yourself doing this all day, how to always paste as plain text covers ways to make it the default on other machines too.

How to Copy and Move Files

The Files app works the way you'd expect:

• Select a file and press Ctrl + C, open the destination folder and press Ctrl + V to make a copy.
• Use Ctrl + X instead of Ctrl + C to move the file rather than copy it.
• You can also drag files between folders. Dragging onto Google Drive or a USB stick copies the file; dragging within the same drive moves it.

To select several files at once, hold Ctrl and click each one, or hold Shift to select a range.

Copying Screenshots

ChromeOS screenshots go to the clipboard automatically, so you can paste them straight into a chat or document without hunting for the file.

• Ctrl + Show windows (the key with the stacked rectangles) captures the whole screen.
• Ctrl + Shift + Show windows opens the screen capture tool so you can drag over just part of the screen.

The image is also saved to your Downloads folder, and a notification confirms it was copied to the clipboard. Press Ctrl + V wherever you want it.

The Built-In Clipboard History

This is the trick most Chromebook owners miss. ChromeOS keeps a short clipboard history:

• Press Search + V (or Launcher + V on newer keyboards) to open it.
• It shows your last five copied items, including text and images.
• Click one to paste it, or remove an item you don't want to keep.

It solves the classic "I copied two things in a row and lost the first one" problem. But it's deliberately small:

• Five items is the whole buffer, so older copies roll off fast.
• The history is cleared when you sign out or restart.
• There's no pinning, search or organizing, so it won't hold the address or snippet you paste every week.

For a broader look at what the browser itself does and doesn't remember, see Chrome clipboard history.

Copying and Pasting in the Linux Terminal

If you've turned on the Linux development environment, the Terminal uses different shortcuts because Ctrl + C is reserved for stopping commands:

• Ctrl + Shift + C copies selected text
• Ctrl + Shift + V pastes

Many terminal setups also paste on a right-click. For the full picture on every platform, see how to copy and paste in Terminal.

When Copy and Paste Stops Working

A few quick fixes clear up most problems:

• Click into the field first. Ctrl + V only works when a text field has focus.
• Check the site. Some web pages block copying or right-clicking. Selecting the text and using Ctrl + C, or trying a different browser window, often works where the menu doesn't.
• Check for extensions. A misbehaving Chrome extension can intercept shortcuts. Try the same paste in a Guest window to rule it out.
• Restart. A restart clears a stuck clipboard and takes less than a minute on most Chromebooks. Just remember it wipes the clipboard history too.

If You Also Work on a Mac or Windows PC

Plenty of people use a Chromebook alongside a Mac or Windows computer, and that's where the five-item limit starts to hurt. Something you copied on your laptop this morning is nowhere to be found when you need it in the browser this afternoon.

That's the problem Copaste is built for. It's a clipboard manager for macOS and Windows that keeps an unlimited, searchable history of what you copy, including text, images and files. You can pin the snippets you reach for every day, organize them with tags, and use its Chrome extension to get that same history inside the browser. It's local-first, so your clipboard isn't shipped off to a server you don't control.

Copaste doesn't run natively on ChromeOS, so on a Chromebook, Search + V is still your best built-in tool. On your Mac or PC, though, you never have to worry about losing a copy again.

Quick Reference

• Copy / cut / paste: Ctrl + C / Ctrl + X / Ctrl + V
• Right-click: two-finger tap, or Alt + click
• Paste as plain text: Ctrl + Shift + V
• Clipboard history: Search (or Launcher) + V, last five items
• Screenshot to clipboard: Ctrl + Show windows
• Terminal: Ctrl + Shift + C / Ctrl + Shift + V

Learn the first three, add Search + V, and copying and pasting on a Chromebook becomes faster than on most computers.