Edge Drop vs Ditto: Visual Shelf or Searchable History?

Choose Ditto if you want a searchable clipboard history that you drive from the keyboard: press Ctrl+`, type a few letters, press Enter, and the item is pasted. Choose Edge Drop if you mostly reuse screenshots, images and files, and want them as cards on a screen-edge shelf that you can drag straight into other apps. Both are free, open source and keep your history on your own PC. They are built for different jobs.

Edge Drop is made by the team behind this site. Ditto's strengths are set out below as plainly as Edge Drop's.

Edge Drop vs Ditto at a glance

What Ditto does best

Ditto describes itself as an extension to the standard Windows clipboard. It saves each item you copy to a local SQLite database so you can get it back later, and it's open source under GPL-3.0.

Its main strengths:

• Keyboard search. Open Ditto with Ctrl+`, type part of what you copied, and press Enter. Nothing needs the mouse, which makes it fast for text you remember but can't see.
• Plain-text paste. Ditto's wiki lists Shift+Enter to paste plain text only. Edge Drop has no plain-text paste option.
• Groups. You can file clips into groups (F7 creates one from the selected clips) and move between them from the keyboard.
• Sync between your own computers. The project page lists keeping several computers' clipboards in sync, with data encrypted when sent over the network. Ditto's site also states "No login, No cloud, No telemetry".
• Depth of options. The wiki documents scripting, auto-delete, custom shortcuts and excluding clips from being saved. Edge Drop has no scripting and no per-app exclusion rules.
• Easy to deploy. Installer, portable zip, Microsoft Store, winget install -e --id Ditto.Ditto and Chocolatey are all official routes. A portable copy suits locked-down or shared PCs.

Ditto's list is compact and text-first. You can see image thumbnails, but it isn't a gallery, and getting an item back means pasting it.

What Edge Drop does best

Edge Drop is a clipboard shelf. It stays hidden until your cursor touches the left edge of the screen (you can switch to the right or top edge) or you press Alt+C. Recent copies appear as cards: text, links, colours, images, and files copied in Explorer.

Its strengths are about getting things *out*:

• Drag images and files into other apps. Drag an image or file out of Edge Drop into Explorer, Word, Slack, Photoshop or any app that accepts dropped files. Files are dragged as the original files; images are handed over as PNG files.
• Files survive after you copy something else. Windows only holds one live clipboard. Edge Drop records an Explorer file copy as a list of file paths, so you can click or drag those files an hour later.
• Stacks. Drag one image or file card onto another to group up to 10 items, then drag the whole stack at once. Merging and splitting stacks explains the rules.
• Click to paste without losing your place. Clicking a card pastes it into the app you were using. The shelf doesn't take focus away from that app.
• Type filters. One click shows only Text, Links, Images, Files or Colors.
• Drop files onto the shelf to stage them before you need them.

Text, link and colour cards can't be dragged out; you click them to paste. Edge Drop has a search box that matches text, links and file names, but long clips are only searched within their first 300 characters, so Edge Drop's search is no match for Ditto when you're hunting for a sentence from last week.

History keeps 250 unpinned items by default (100, 500 or 1000 are selectable), pinned items don't count toward that limit, and history survives a restart.

Storage and privacy

Both tools are local-only and send no telemetry, but they store your history differently.

• Ditto keeps items in a SQLite database on your PC. Its wiki documents excluding clips from being saved and auto-delete options.
• Edge Drop keeps history under %APPDATA%\Edge-Drop. The history index is encrypted with Windows DPAPI, tied to your Windows account; captured images and the full text of long clips are stored as ordinary files. It skips copies that apps mark as excluded from clipboard history, and known password-manager formats. Incognito mode pauses capture, and the Auto-delete timer can purge unpinned items after 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours or 7 days.

Any clipboard history can end up holding a password or API key. Stopping clipboard managers from saving secrets covers the settings to check in each type of tool.

Neither project publishes a memory measurement. If memory use matters on your PC, measure each app's idle cost yourself before deciding.

Can you run Ditto and Edge Drop together?

You can, but both will record every copy, so you'll have two histories with the same items. That's confusing, and it doubles the places a copied secret can sit. Pick one as your clipboard history. Running two clipboard tools at once explains the conflicts in more detail.

A 20-minute test to decide

1. Install one tool and quit the other.
2. Copy a paragraph, a URL, a screenshot, five files in Explorer, and then three more bits of text.
3. Find the paragraph by typing one word from it.
4. Get the five files into a new folder without going back to Explorer.
5. Restart the PC and check what is still there.
6. Repeat with the other tool.

If step 3 is what you do all day, keep Ditto. If step 4 is, keep Edge Drop.

Switching from Ditto

Edge Drop has no import or export, so your Ditto history won't come across. Copy the few clips you reuse into Edge Drop and pin them, or keep Ditto installed but closed until you're sure. Switching from Ditto to a visual shelf walks through it, and installing Edge Drop covers the GitHub and Microsoft Store versions.

FAQ

Is Edge Drop a good Ditto alternative?

For moving images and files between apps, yes. For keyboard search of old text, plain-text paste or syncing between PCs, Ditto remains the better tool.

Can Edge Drop paste as plain text like Ditto?

No. Edge Drop pastes text with its original formatting. Use Ditto's Shift+Enter, or a tool such as PowerToys Advanced Paste, if you need plain text.

Does either app upload my clipboard?

Ditto states no cloud and no telemetry; its optional sync goes between your own computers. Edge Drop has no sync and no telemetry. The GitHub build checks GitHub for updates, and an image you drag onto the shelf from a web page may be downloaded from its address; nothing else goes online.

Related reading

• Best Ditto Alternatives for Windows: 8 Clipboard Managers
• Ditto Clipboard Manager Review: When It's the Right Pick
• Ditto vs CopyQ vs Win+V: Which Should You Use?
• Ditto vs Windows Clipboard History (Win+V): Which to Use

Sources

• Ditto (GitHub) — description, stored formats, default hotkey, install options, GPL-3.0 licence.
• Ditto website — local-first: no login, no cloud, no telemetry; paste on double-click or Enter.
• Ditto project page (SourceForge) — search, sync between computers, network encryption, SQLite storage.
• Ditto wiki (GitHub) — groups, Shift+Enter plain-text paste, scripting and exclusion topics.
• Edge Drop (GitHub) — source code and licence.
• Edge Drop (Microsoft Store) — Store version.

Copy. Stack. Drop.

Transform your clipboard into an interactive edge shelf. Stack, pin, and drag assets into any app with zero friction.

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How to Install Guide · First 10 Minutes Guide · Drag & Drop Guide · Edge Drop vs Win+V · Support