iOS 14 Notifies Users When an App or Widget Reads Your Clipboard

Earlier this year, developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk revealed that many iPhone and iPad apps quietly access the clipboard, which is where text that has been copied and pasted is temporarily stored. Given that users may have sensitive information copied to the clipboard, such as passwords, this could pose privacy and security concerns.

ios 14 clipboard notifications featured carousel
Fortunately, it appears that Apple is making a change to provide users with more transparency. As demonstrated by Mysk, the first developer beta of iOS 14 notifies users when an app or widget pastes text from the clipboard.

These clipboard notifications are one of many privacy-focused changes introduced in iOS 14, with others including an indicator whenever an app is using your device's microphone or camera, as well as a new setting that lets you choose to share your approximate location, rather than your precise location, with an app.


Installing the iOS 14 beta currently requires an Apple Developer Program membership, which costs $99 per year, but a free public beta will be rolled out next month. The software update will be released to all users with an iPhone 6s or newer in the fall.

Related Forum: iOS 14

Popular Stories

2024 iPhone Boxes Feature

Apple Changes Trade-In Values for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and More

Thursday January 16, 2025 6:45 am PST by
Apple today adjusted estimated trade-in values for select iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models in the U.S., according to its website. Some values increased, while others decreased. The changes were not too significant, with most values rising or dropping by $5 to $50. We have outlined some examples below: Device New Value Old Value iPhone 15 Pro Max Up to $630 U ...
Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Leak Reveals All-New Design

Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app. Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Generic iOS 18

Everything New in iOS 18.3 Beta 3

Thursday January 16, 2025 12:39 pm PST by
Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features. Notification Summary Changes Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines. For...
2024 App Store Awards

Apple Explains Why It Removed TikTok From the App Store in the U.S.

Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action. Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature Single Camera 1 Redux

'iPhone 17 Air' Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Wednesday January 15, 2025 7:16 am PST by
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the "ultra-thin" device. Overall, the "iPhone 17 Air" is shaping up to be a mixed bag. Due to its thinness, the device is expected to have some limited specifications compared to the iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, only a single speaker, no SIM...
iPad Pro vs iPhone 17 Air Feature

Here's How Thin the iPhone 17 Air Might Be

Friday January 17, 2025 3:38 pm PST by
For the last several months, we've been hearing rumors about a redesigned version of the iPhone 17 that Apple might call the iPhone 17 "Air," or something along those lines. It's going to replace the iPhone 17 Plus as Apple's fourth iPhone option, and it will be offered alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. We know the iPhone 17 Air is going to be super slim, but...
iOS 19 Roundup Feature

iOS 19 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhones

Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr. The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 14 iPhon...
HomePod mini and Apple TV

Apple Expected to Launch 20+ Products This Year: Here's the Full List

Friday January 17, 2025 5:30 am PST by
2025 promises to be quite a big year for Apple, with the company rumored to be planning more than 20 product announcements this year. Apple's rumored smart home hub will be its second all-new product to launch in as many years, following the Apple Vision Pro headset last year. And of course, we will get several new iPhone and Apple Watch models, like every year. Beyond that, Apple could...

Top Rated Comments

Porco Avatar
60 months ago
Is it just me or... why not prevent apps from reading the copy/paste buffer without specific user consent (or at least make that an option, I can understand/imagine there might be some specific instances where users want automatic pasting of the buffer, though I’d guess that would be a small minority)?

Telling me an app is being naughty is good - but preventing them from being able to be naughty in the first place is better, surely?
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
simply258 Avatar
60 months ago
It should be an option in Privacy, to toggle which apps are allowed access to the clipboard.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sasparilla Avatar
60 months ago
This is great. Bringing greater situational awareness to the users is a good thing.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
oneMadRssn Avatar
60 months ago

Is it just me or... why not prevent apps from reading the copy/paste buffer without specific user consent (or at least make that an option, I can understand/imagine there might be some specific instances where users want automatic pasting of the buffer, though I’d guess that would be a small minority)?

Telling me an app is being naughty is good - but preventing them from being able to be naughty in the first place is better, surely?
The Deliveries app has a pretty good workflow that benefits from automatically reading the clipboard. You copy a tracking number, open the Deliveries app, and it immediately parses the tracking number in the clipboard, identifies the carrier, and suggests adding it to the list of tracked packages.

There might be other workflows that benefit from reading the clipboard.

Is it worth losing those workflows for the sake of privacy and security? Maybe, not sure. But there are workflows that benefit from it.

[EDIT: just re-read your post. I agree, it should be an opt-in dialog that you allow on a per-app basis, like with location tracking.]
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mdracer Avatar
60 months ago
Burn them at the stake!

I don’t want them seeing how often I copy corrected ways to spell words.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
uniquexoxo Avatar
60 months ago

One problem I could see with this is that it could make some of the platform features not functional, such as the auto fill of validation codes from Messages to basically any app.Apple doesn’t seem to like allowing the user to disable something they specifically designed (took a while, initially, to be able to delete built-in apps, for example).
I don’t think clipboard copies those codes such as OTP for transactions. Rather AI reading the text and understanding it as a verification code and the system detects that you have a numberpad open in app hence AI learning detects it as a validation code for that app hence suggesting it, that is also why validation code doesn’t appear when you have a full on keyboard open onscreen. The code wasn’t really copied per se, but rather read and understood in an AI level.

this is to my understanding on how validation code and OTP works.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)