www.androidpolice.com Android 13 wants to further improve privacy with tweaks to the clipboard

The system clipboard will automatically be emptied after an hour

Android 12L hasn't even been released in stable yet, but Google is already hard at work on the next big thing: Android 13. The company has just launched the first developer preview of the upcoming platform upgrade, and it already includes a slew of exciting new features, ranging from major additions to minor quality-of-life enhancements. This particular inclusion falls into the latter category, and it's one that I didn't even realize I needed until now. Android 13 has introduced a function that can clear your clipboard automatically if you haven't added anything else for a set period of time.

As noted in Esper's Android 13 deep-dive, the feature is disabled by default (if you don't like this change, you can put down your pitchforks for now) and is actually inspired by a similar function in Gboard, which also clears its internal clipboard after a while. The new system-wide feature will automatically empty the global Android clipboard after 3,600,000 milliseconds (or 60 minutes) if you don't copy/cut something during that time. You can see a video by Mishaal Rahman showing the feature in action right below — the timeout was reduced to 5 seconds for demonstration purposes.

It's a neat peace-of-mind feature to have — I've frequently caught myself pasting old snippets of text in conversations by accident, and this would minimize the occurrence of that. But it also has an added security benefit. In case you don't know, Android apps can access whatever you have in your clipboard at any time, without you even having to tap the Paste button. Apps like TikTok have been found guilty of snatching clipboard data without user consent on iOS devices in the past, and while we can't point out any major Android apps that currently do that (apps in the background can't do it, and as of Android 12, a toast notification will pop up whenever an app pulls something from your clipboard), the door is still open for that to happen.

If you had a shady app accessing your clipboard, this wouldn't be a 100% effective solution, but you'll have fewer snippets dumped into an overseas server. A small win is still a win.

If you have a supported Pixel phone and want to be among the first to try Android 13, the first dev builds are out, so flash away at your own risk. If you don't want to mess around with unstable software, you'll have to wait a few months.

Arol is a tech journalist and contributor at Android Police. He has also worked as a news/feature writer at XDA-Developers and Pixel Spot. Currently a Pharmacy student, Arol has had a soft spot for everything tech-related since he was a child. When not writing, you'll either find him nose-deep into his textbooks or playing video games. Reach him at arol@androidpolice.com.