How to reset the clipboard on your Mac

Learn how to use the universal clipboard in macOS Sierra

Surely you have used the clipboard on your Mac on more than one occasion. And you without realizing it. You're using it every time you "copy / paste". That text, for example, is temporarily stored on the Mac clipboard so that it can be pasted into another window or even on an iOS device if you activate the universal clipboard.

However, it is very possible that after much use and possible collapse, when copying and pasting the content, the commands don't work. It's time to restart your computer and see if everything returns to normal. But if you are not interested in restarting your Mac, you should know that you have several ways to restart the Mac clipboard. We tell you what they are:

Restart the Mac Clipboard via Activity Monitor

Restart clipboard on Mac

The first option we give you is to use the Activity Monitor that you will find on every Mac. Where is it located? Easy: Finder> Applications> Utilities. Inside this folder you will find the Activity Monitor. Do you want an even faster route? Use Spotlight: invoke it with Cmd + space and type in its search box "Activity Monitor". Click on the first option.

Once Activity Monitor launches, in its search box in the upper right, type the word "pboard." It will return a single result. Mark it and press the button with the «X» that you have in the upper left part of the app. It will ask you if you want to be sure to close that process. You must press «Force exit». The clipboard will be restarted and surely the copy / paste problem will be solved.

Restart the Mac Clipboard with Terminal

Another way would be to use Terminal. Where do I run this function? Well we go to Finder> Applications> Utilities. Once "Terminal" is launched - of course, you can also use Spotlight for its search - you will have to write the following:

killall pboard

After this you will have to hit the «Enter» key and close terminal. The process will have been restarted. And with it, the problem solved. If these two steps do not solve it, yes, it would be better to restart the Mac to see if the problem is resolved.


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  1.   Hector Ulysses said

    Thanks it worked correctly for me doing it from the terminal I am with a MacBook with an M1 processor I hope someone will also find it useful