Skip to content

How do I read text from the system clipboard?

Quick start (minimal MWE)

import androidx.compose.material3.Button
import androidx.compose.material3.Text
import androidx.compose.runtime.*
import com.mobilebytelabs.kmptoolkit.clipboard.Clipboard
import kotlinx.coroutines.launch

@Composable
fun PasteIntoFieldButton(onPasted: (String) -> Unit) {
    val scope = rememberCoroutineScope()
    Button(onClick = {
        scope.launch {
            Clipboard.read()?.let(onPasted)
        }
    }) { Text("Paste") }
}

Caveats / per-platform notes

  • iOS 14+: a paste action surfaces a system toast "{App} pasted from {SourceApp}" — Apple's privacy policy, not bypassable.
  • Android 12+: the OS shows a paste-notification toast for the same reason. For privacy compliance, only read the clipboard in direct response to a user-initiated action (e.g. button click), never on app foreground.
  • JS / wasmJs: browsers require the page to be in focus AND a user-gesture handler; some browsers prompt the user for permission on first read.
  • JVM Desktop: Toolkit.getSystemClipboard(); on Linux, also tries xclip -selection clipboard -o for non-AWT environments.