We had recently written about Clippy Beta which brings Copy and Paste feature to the iPhone. We had also noted that it was an impressive attempt to bring the missing feature to the iPhone.
One of our readers, Matt, sent us an email to tell us that Jailbreak app called ℏClipboard which brings global copy and paste to the iPhone is better than Clippy. So I decided to check it out and was pleasantly surprised.
ℏClipboard is based on iKeyEx and is developed by iPhone developer, kennytm. You need a jailbroken iPhone to install ℏClipboard on your iPhone. After you have installed ℏClipboard on your jailbroken iPhone, you need to enable it via the Settings app as it is turned off by default.
You can enable it by going to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> International Keyboards and swipping your finger to turn On ℏClipboard keyboard.
Once it is enabled, you can switch to the ℏClipboard keyboard by tapping on the Globe button as seen below.
The ℏClipboard has the following buttons:
Copy button 
Tapping on this button copies the entire contents of the text to the clipboard. The copied item will then be visible in the clipboard section of ℏClipboard keyboard.
Select from Here/Select to Here button 
This button can be used to select portion of the text. So move the cursor to beginning of the text you want to copy and tap on Select from Here button and then go to the end of the text you want to copy and then tap Select to here button. This will copy portion of the text to the clipboard. However, I liked the ease of selecting text in Clippy rather than the "Select from here/Select to here" button of ℏClipboard.
Navigational buttons 
You can use the navigation buttons "Move to beginning" and "Move to End" for quicker navigation.
If you want to paste the contents of the clipboard simply tap on the item in the clipboard. The item just pasted will move to the top of the clipboard.
The cool thing about this app as compared to Clippy is that it allows you to copy multiple items to the clipboard and gives you very easy access to the copied items thanks to the clipboard section. You can copy up to 10 items to the clipboard.
You can also delete items in the clipboard quite easily. Swipping your finger horizontally over an item enables the "Delete" button, tapping on it will remove the item from the clipboard.
Another interesting functionality of hClipboard is a secondary clipboard called Templates. The main difference between the primary clipboard and Templates is that Templates can be used to store infinite number of items while you can copy only 10 items to the primary clipboard. So you can use Templates to record frequently used text such as usernames while you can use the primary clipboard to copy and paste temporary items.
You can toggle between the primary Clipboard and Templates by tapping on the "Switch to Templates/Clipboard" button on the lower-left corner of ℏClipboard keyboard. I really liked the ability to copy multiple items and the idea behind templates.
Just like Clippy, one of limitiations of ℏClipboard as a keyboard extension is that it can only be used where iPhone's virtual keyboard could be enabled, so you cannot use it to copy text from iPhone's Safari browser. However, developer of aptly named CopyingTextFromSafari has provided a workaround to copy text from a webpage or the entire webpage on your iPhone using ℏClipboard. You can follow the instructions mentioned here to add the bookmarklets.
You can then use the bookmarklet to copy the entire contents of the webpage or the bookmarklet to copy text from a webpage in conjunction with ℏClipboard.
If you want to copy text from an email you have received, then forward the email which will enable iPhone's virtual keyboard and you can then use the "copy" button. Similarly in case of SMS messages instead of using the default SMS app, you can use jailbreak iPhone app biteSMS which allows you to forward SMS which will enable iPhone's virtual keyboard and you can then use the "copy" button. The tip to copy text from SMS and Mail were given by Aleksander, one of our readers when we had posted a review about Clippy.
You can checkout the developer's website to find out the known issues.
ℏClipboard is easily the best Copy and Paste solution for the iPhone. If developer kennytm can implement Clippy's way of copying text and magically figure out a cleaner way to copy text by enabling iPhone's keyboard on a webpage then it would be the perfect Copy and Paste solution for the iPhone.
Thanks Matt for letting us know about ℏClipboard, you are right its a better application than Clippy which I think is also an impressive attempt to bring the missing feature to the iPhone.
In fact after looking at iPhone apps like ℏClipboard, I am looking forward to Apple's implementation of Copy and Paste feature even more.
Folks, what do you think about ℏClipboard? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
great app!
How convenient!
can you provide info on how to find it thru installer or cydia and how to install it… because i cant find it
to get this go to cydia (obviously if u dont know what cydia is your out of the know—-it must me jailbroken)
go to SECTIONS
go to SYSTEM
scroll down to the H's
look for hClipboard
install
confirm
voila, now you've got clipboard…kool great app
The letter 'h' of hClipboard appears as Square .. anybody knows why and how to fix it?
Yes, it's great app, but it would be even more greater if templates could be saved for later use in any other "texting" app.
Hey ZomPjer,
That's true, I hadn't noticed, since the primary clipboard was available across apps, I assumed Templates would also be available as well.
Its a pity its not, lets hope kennytm fixes it in the next version.
thanks!
This is the one application that has convinced me to jailbreak my phone!
Yesss! It's already fixed! Thanx! Now, this is greatest app for iPhone
i am not showing this under my sections so i need to add any source?
Nope no source needs to be added. Just go to search and look for hclippboard
i dont know if there is anything wrong with my cydia but i am not showing it anywhere. The sources i have are: bigboss, ispazio, modmyi, ste packaging, telesphoreo tengelo, and zodttd so i must me missing something. I even checked installed packages and nothing.
Hey tj,
As mbhullar mentioned, the best way to look for apps in Cydia is to use the search feature.
So launch Cydia, tap on the "Search" tab on the both right corner next to "Manage". Type hClipboard in the search box and you should be see the app in the search results.
I have tried that and still no luck even tried going through one by one and I do not have it there. thats why I believe its a source issue.
Hey ZonPjer,
Thanks for the heads up.
Yeah, kennytm has fixed the issue with Templates in the latest version, its great.
Strange issue as hClipboard source is hosted by BigBoss.
Hey tj,
I had the same problem an hour ago. I couldn't find it anywhere in Cydia. So I exited Cydia and relaunched it. After launching, it said there was a critical update. I installed all updates and springboard restarted. I launched Cydia again and after using the search function, I found hClipboard.
I just installed this and I'm very happy with it. When I first tried to install it there were "host not found" errors. I then manually installed iKeyEx first, then installed hClipboard and everything went fine.
go to search in cydia type "clipboard" it comes up
hClipboard has an excellent implementation, clean interface and very good usability by giving many clips available at any time. Plus templates.
The only drawback now is that it can't be invoked on phone numbers (Contact list) so you can't use hClipboard to send that phone your friend is asking for. CLippy can do that, but it's somewhat annoying appearing every time you go to numbers and symbols.
I have downloaded hClipboard from Cydia twice, along with reinstalling iKeyEx. I still cannot use this App, it doesn't even show up in the keyboard setting like it should.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
I was having the same issue.
I just did a full reboot on the iphone, and it shows up now.
following the steps to copy text off a webpage is pretty sweet once i figured it out
I've downloaded hclipboard many times, I've loaded ikeyex also seveal times. I've restarted springboard many times and rebooted a couple of times, but the choice of iKeyEx or hclipboard never show. any ideas? I jailbroke a couple of days ago and still new at this. I'm running 2.2.1.
Thanks……….
hi i am having the same problem installed hciplboard and it dose not show up in the settings keyboard is there something wrong or am i doing anything wrong
mmmm, not sure this works. keeps crashing on my phone
is it supposed to work on 2.2.1? It worked before i upgraded to 2.2.1 bit not anymore. Np iKeyEx keybords shows up. I'm on a 1G jailbroken and unlocked iPhone.
Hey Shlea,
I have iPhone firmware 2.2.1 and it works for me.
You might want to reinstall the app using Cydia and see if it works.
And for the desktop i found http://clicktoapp.com…. for copy paste freaks..