Swiftkey on Android may gain Windows 10 clipboard sync feature

Damien Wilde | Oct 26 2020 - 6:14 am PT

Although Swiftkey might not be the most popular or most used Android keyboard, a neat new clipboard sync between your smartphone and Windows 10 PC is in the works.

If this sounds similar to the Link to Windows feature seen on certain Samsung devices, then it’s because it is really similar. However, with Swiftkey not being limited to just Samsung-branded hardware, this could be a really nice option for those using the Microsoft-owned keyboard.

The feature was spotted by mobile developer and occasional leaker Alessandro Paluzzi over on Twitter (via WinFuture.de) with Microsoft apparently starting work on the option to sync your clipboard history to the cloud. This effectively gets around the Link to Windows device limitation, as all Android devices can theoretically run Swiftkey.

It’s not clear just how the cloud syncing of your clipboard on Windows 10 and Swiftkey on Android will work in practice. There could be a dedicated keyboard tab that holds recently copied items from your desktop on your mobile device, but it’s not clear if it will work in both directions or not.

That isn’t even addressing any privacy concerns, especially if you have multiple users on a Windows 10-powered machine in your home, office, or anywhere else for that matter. We can imagine that passwords and user account information will be a prime area where this might be ripe for abuse. That said, it’s not clear just how the cloud sync between Android and Windows will even work with Swiftkey as yet — heck, the feature may never come to a future stable build.

At least until Microsoft sheds more light on the option, syncing your clipboard items between Android and Windows 10 will still remain a Samsung-exclusive feature. Given that initially, Microsoft said that clipboard sync on Windows would only be possible with cooperation with an OEM, this potential Swiftkey workaround might prove to be very popular.