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

iOS 26

15 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.2

Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below. Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
iPhone 14 Pro Dynamic Island

iPhone 18 Pro Leak Adds New Evidence for Under-Display Face ID

Monday December 8, 2025 4:54 am PST by
Apple is actively testing under-screen Face ID for next year's iPhone 18 Pro models using a special "spliced micro-transparent glass" window built into the display, claims a Chinese leaker. According to "Smart Pikachu," a Weibo account that has previously shared accurate supply-chain details on Chinese Android hardware, Apple is testing the special glass as a way to let the TrueDepth...
iOS 26

Apple Seeds Second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to Developers and Public Beta Testers

Monday December 8, 2025 10:18 am PST by
Apple today seeded the second release candidate version of iOS 26.2 to developers and public beta testers, with the software coming one week after Apple seeded the first RC. The release candidate represents the final version iOS 26.2 that will be provided to the public if no further bugs are found. Registered developers and public beta testers can download the betas from the Settings app on...
iPhone 17 Pro Cosmic Orange

10 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's iPhone 18 Pro

Monday December 1, 2025 2:40 am PST by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. One thing worth...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature 1

Apple to Make More Foldable iPhones Than Expected

Tuesday December 9, 2025 9:59 am PST by
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports. In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
Johny Srouji

Apple's Chipmaking Chief Johny Srouji Responds to Report About Him Potentially Leaving

Monday December 8, 2025 9:23 am PST by
Apple's chipmaking chief Johny Srouji has reportedly indicated that he plans to continue working for the company for the foreseeable future. "I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon," said Srouji, in a memo obtained by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Here is Srouji's full memo, as shared by Bloomberg:I know you've been reading all kind of rumors and...
Johny Srouji

Apple Chip Chief Johny Srouji Could Be Next to Go as Exodus Continues

Sunday December 7, 2025 10:41 am PST by
Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji could be the next leading executive to leave the company amid an alarming exodus of leading employees, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. Srouji apparently recently told CEO Tim Cook that he is "seriously considering leaving" in the near future. He intends to join another company if he departs. Srouji leads Apple's chip design ...
Intel Inside iPhone Feature

Apple's Return to Intel Rumored to Extend to iPhone

Friday December 5, 2025 10:08 am PST by
Intel is expected to begin supplying some Mac and iPad chips in a few years, and the latest rumor claims the partnership might extend to the iPhone. In a research note with investment firm GF Securities this week, obtained by MacRumors, analyst Jeff Pu said he and his colleagues "now expect" Intel to reach a supply deal with Apple for at least some non-pro iPhone chips starting in 2028....
google pixel 10

Switching Between iPhone and Android Will Get Easier With New Apple and Google Collaboration

Monday December 8, 2025 11:10 am PST by
Apple and Google are teaming up to make it easier for users to switch between iPhone and Android smartphones, according to 9to5Google. There is a new Android Canary build available today that simplifies data transfer between two smartphones, and Apple is going to implement the functionality in an upcoming iOS 26 beta. Apple already has a Move to iOS app for transferring data from an Android...
Apple Fitness Plus expansion hero

Apple Fitness+ Coming to 28 New Regions With Digital Voice Dubbing

Monday December 8, 2025 6:19 am PST by
Apple today announced that Fitness+ is expanding to 28 new markets on December 15 in the service's largest international rollout since launch, accompanied by new language dubbing and a K-Pop music genre. Apple Fitness+ will become available in Chile, Hong Kong, India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan, and additional regions on December 15, with Japan scheduled to follow early next year....

Top Rated Comments

Porco Avatar
71 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
71 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
71 months ago
This is great. Bringing greater situational awareness to the users is a good thing.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
oneMadRssn Avatar
71 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
71 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
71 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)