Clipboard Inspector

A clipboard inspector is a developer tool that reveals the full contents of the system clipboard when a paste or drag-and-drop event occurs. When you copy something — text, an image, a file, or rich content — the operating system stores it in multiple formats simultaneously. This tool shows you all of those formats (called MIME types) and their raw content, which is invaluable for debugging paste handling in web applications.

When you copy text from a web page or document, the clipboard typically contains several representations: text/plain (plain text without formatting), text/html (the full HTML with styles and structure), and sometimes application-specific formats. Web browsers and apps provide multiple formats so that the receiving application can choose the most appropriate one — a plain text editor uses text/plain, while a rich text editor might use text/html.

Your clipboard data is completely safe. This tool runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. No clipboard content is ever transmitted to any server. You can verify this by checking the browser's Network tab in DevTools while using the tool. All processing happens locally on your device.

There are two ways to read clipboard data in browsers. The traditional approach uses paste event listeners which fire when the user presses Ctrl+V/⌘+V. The modern Clipboard API (navigator.clipboard.read()) allows programmatic clipboard reading at any time, but requires explicit user permission. Both approaches are supported by this inspector. The Clipboard API button uses the async API, while pasting uses the event-based approach.

Copy the same content your users would paste into your app, then paste it here to see exactly what MIME types and data your paste event handler will receive. This helps you understand why certain content looks different after pasting, debug rich text editor paste behavior, implement correct file upload handling, and ensure your app handles all the clipboard formats users might paste.

Common clipboard MIME types include: text/plain (plain text), text/html (HTML with formatting), text/uri-list (URLs), image/png (PNG images), image/jpeg (JPEG images), application/json (JSON data), and custom types from specific applications like application/x-vnd.google-docs-document-slice-clip+wrapped (Google Docs).

Mobile browsers have limited clipboard API support due to security restrictions. The tool works best on desktop browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge). On mobile, you may need to use the Clipboard API button after granting clipboard permission, as the paste event may not fire the same way. iOS Safari and Android Chrome have partial support.