Edge Drop vs Clipdiary: Shelf or Long-Term Clipboard Log?

Clipdiary is a clipboard archive: it saves everything you copy, keeps it for years, and gives you stars, labels and snippets to find it again. Edge Drop is a staging shelf: it keeps recent copies, including images and Explorer files, as cards at the screen edge so you can click to paste or drag them into other apps. Choose Clipdiary if you need to recover something you copied months ago. Choose Edge Drop if you need today's screenshots and files to hand, and prefer old copies to expire.

Edge Drop vs Clipdiary at a glance

What Clipdiary does well

Clipdiary records your clipboard automatically and keeps the history on your computer, which it describes as lasting "even after many years". Features listed on its site:

• Saves plain text, RTF, images (BMP), HTML, files and more.
• Stars to mark important clips, and labels to group history into folders.
• Snippets for reusable text such as standard replies, addresses or code.
• An optional password on the database, using AES-256 encryption.
• A portable ZIP version as well as the installer.

The current stable release on the download page is 5.7, from December 2021; a 5.72 beta was posted in October 2026.

If your job involves finding a customer reference or a quote you copied last quarter, a long, labelled archive is exactly what you want. Edge Drop is the wrong tool for that: its search only looks at text, links and file names, and long clips are searched within their first 300 characters.

What Edge Drop does well

Edge Drop is designed for the copies you're using now.

• Images and files as cards. Screenshots are thumbnails; Explorer file copies stay on the shelf as file cards after you copy other things.
• Drag-out. Drag an image or file out of Edge Drop into Slack, Word, Photoshop, Explorer or a browser upload box.
• Stacks. Group up to 10 images or files and drag them as a set.
• Retention you set once. History capacity caps unpinned items, the Auto-delete timer removes them after 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours or 7 days, and Clear unpinned on restart empties history each time Edge Drop starts. Pinned items are kept.

Edge Drop has no export, labels or snippets, so it can't serve as a long-term archive even if you set history to the maximum.

Clipdiary licensing

Clipdiary's download is a fully functional 60-day trial. After that you need a licence. According to the free licence page, a free licence covers:

• Personal, non-commercial use on a personal computer. This excludes remote work, freelancing and running your own business.
• Work use on a private computer if your average combined income over the previous six months is under $2,000 a month.
• Use by a not-for-profit organisation.

Anyone else needs to buy a licence. Edge Drop has no trial or licence conditions; it's Apache 2.0 for any use.

How much history should you keep?

A long log is useful and risky at the same time. As an illustration, 80 copies a workday over 220 working days is about 17,600 clips a year. Some will be research you'd love to find again. Others will be passwords, addresses and private messages you copied once and forgot.

If you choose Clipdiary:

1. Turn on the database password.
2. Make sure your disk is encrypted, especially on a laptop.
3. Check whether your password manager marks its copies so clipboard tools skip them, and don't rely on it until you've tested.
4. Never star or label a secret.
5. Review and prune labels from time to time, so the archive stays useful rather than just large.

If you choose Edge Drop, pick an Auto-delete timer that matches how far back you really look; 24 hours or 7 days suits most staging work. How many items a clipboard should remember looks at the trade-off in more detail.

Privacy compared

• Clipdiary keeps history on your PC and can password-protect it with AES-256. Without that password, anyone who can use your Windows account can browse the archive.
• Edge Drop never uploads history. Its history index is encrypted with Windows DPAPI, tied to your Windows account, but captured images and the full text of long clips are stored as ordinary files. It skips content marked as excluded from clipboard history and known password-manager formats, and Incognito mode pauses capture. Whether a local clipboard app needs encryption at rest explains what that protects against.

Which should you pick?

Don't run two loggers at once. If both Clipdiary and Edge Drop record every copy, you double the places a secret can sit. Running two clipboard tools at once explains the conflicts.

FAQ

Is Clipdiary free?

There's a 60-day trial, then a free licence for personal non-commercial use, low-income private work use or non-profits. Everyone else needs to buy a licence.

Can Edge Drop keep clipboard history forever?

Pinned items stay until you unpin or delete them, and up to 1000 unpinned items are kept with auto-delete set to Never. There's no export, so it isn't designed as an archive. Besides Clipdiary, Paperclip is a Microsoft Store app pitched on keeping every copy forever.

Does Clipdiary have a portable version?

Yes. The download page offers a portable ZIP.

Related reading

• Clipdiary vs Ditto: Log Everything or Stay Light?
• How Big Should Clipboard History Be? 25 vs 250 vs Unlimited
• Can Windows Auto-Delete Clipboard History? (Timer Options)
• Does a Local Clipboard App Need Encryption at Rest?

Sources

• Clipdiary — formats, stars, labels, snippets, long-term history and AES-256 database password.
• Clipdiary download — 60-day trial, current versions and portable ZIP.
• Clipdiary free licence — who qualifies for a free licence.
• Edge Drop (GitHub) — source code and licence.

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